Hello @EA_Leeuw,
Yes, I live in the UK and purchased the Sims 4 in the UK. I have tried a number of region/language settings on Origin, including United Kingdom - English, United Kingdom - German, Germany - English, and Germany - German. I have also tried these with and without a VPN with location in Germany. Absolutely nothing I try will give me the option to play the Sims 4 in German, or any other language for that matter. This region locking is apparently intentional and occurred at the time of purchase, and I should have looked at the languages before I bought it, according to the EA agent I spoke to earlier.
Here is the same screenshot in English. My settings on my EA account (https://myaccount.ea.com/cp-ui/aboutme/index?locale=en_GB) are now United Kingdom - English, my Origin Application language is now English, and I have no VPN on (so with a UK IP address). As you can see, I still can only select English, rather than the list of 18 languages that customers in the US have available to them.
The other games in my Origin library are not affected by this region locking. I am able to play the Sims 3 in German (and other languages), just not the Sims 4.
Community Manager@JustBee4, it is indeed the case that the possible region lock came into effect when you purchased the game. So if, at the time of purchase, something was not correct (either your current location in comparison to your EA account and Origin store front settings), it could indeed very well be the case that you got a region locked version as the EA agent mentioned. Therefore it is indeed also, unfortunately, not possible to change this later on. ☹️
I had my EA account as United Kingdom - English, my Origin language as English, and no VPN on at the time of purchase several years ago. I have tried these different store settings in the hope of playing in my desired language, to no success. I have searched online, and this is apparently intentional for UK customers, not just me. Here are some other people with the same issue, all of them also UK customers:
As you can see, none of these threads had a solution, with the general consensus being that it has been done intentionally by EA to UK customers. I do not understand this decision by EA and I hope for an update so I can play in other languages. I am very disappointed we are one of the only countries being geo-restricted.
Community ManagerI appreciate you looking further into this for me, I hope this is something EA will amend.
Is there a list of what regions have what language options? I cannot find any official information on this, other than unofficial sources claiming that the UK version is language-locked, and this one EA chat agent's word (when other EA chat agents said different things, assuming it is a technical issue, even though I said I bought the game in the UK to them). I had no idea at the time of purchase that I was purchasing an English-only copy (otherwise, I would have bought from another country's store).
If I were to buy the Sims 4 again from the Steam store (rather than Origin), and purchase it with my location set to Germany, would that work, since it's another copy? Would my DLC work, since it would be from another region? It's on sale right now for 75% off. As much as I would hate to give EA even more of my money, I would like to play the game in German.
For the original point, if the UK version is in fact restricted to one language, and EA doesn't consider amending this despite the UK having one of the world's largest foreign-born populations, I would also suggest editing this misleading page in the EN-GB localisation and changing it to reflect the truth so more people do not get misled:
https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/faq-base-game-changing-languages
