Forum Discussion
I'm having a blast with several of the Maker Packs at the moment. Some of them are a little bit less useable but I've got a ton of use out of a fair few of them.
But do you really need them to have fun ? Does it make your game better ?
In term of scale, the few players who are interested won't spend million dollar in this content.
The goal is still about making millions dollars by reaching many players instead of squeezing the few ones who buy anything.
To obtain over $5 million annual revenue, EA need 14 000 players spending $50 in Moola bundle per month at least.
- CrispySims61924 days agoSeasoned Hotshot
I like new stuff, especially for CAS & Build and Buy and I think the Maker Packs are adding in a decent amount of additional things for my builds and Sims. Having the new items for me certainly increases the amount of fun I have in game because I enjoy working out how to impliment the new items in different ways.
As for the amount of players spending on the Marketplace, I think there are more people that are spending money on the Marketplace than people actually think. The online playerbase is a very small fraction of the actual playerbase that The Sims 4 has. There are many many more players who don't spend all this time online complaining about things and just simply enjoying their game and buying what they want. As of mid 2024, The Sims 4's playerbase is over 85 million. So I think the amount of players spending money on the Marketplace outweighs the players who are not.
- Rachtuggers24 days agoRising Rookie
This is an interesting point actually. I saw a lot of backlash when the idea was first introduced but now there doesn’t seem to be much, you must be right.
Maybe my expectations were too high, or theres nothing suited to me just yet. Hopefully I’ll find some that I like soon. - NoahLGP23 days agoSeasoned Ace
Don't forget in the 85 million of players, 50 million of them came when TS4 became Free-to-enter meaning they are players who didn't spend money in the game.
As recent players they don't own everything yet ($1572.91) :
- For $5 they will probably prefer to get a kit with 25 items instead of a maker pack with less than 15 items.
- For $10 Stuff Pack with 60 items + gameplay is also more interesting than less 30 items from maker packs.
- For $20, Game Pack with 150 items + gameplay is better than less 60 items from maker packs
- For $40, Expansion Pack with 300 items + gameplay + world, maker packs can't compete with less than 120 items.
And I don't talk about the Publisher Sale where these players can get way more content than the Marketplace for the same price.
Maker Packs are in direct competition with paid content (EA packs) and free content (CC and Mods for PC/Mac players), the makers should be more creative to give something special and unique convincing more players to buy their products.
The "Collectors" who own everything aren't the majority of the community.
- Rachtuggers24 days agoRising Rookie
Exactly, the packs aren’t a need, and I’ve already got my doubts about the marketplace as it’s seems like a cash grab/unfair to creators.
Its just my observation that considering how much backlash they recieved about the marketplace, I thought they would be pulling out all the stops to try and entice us, but there’s honestly nothing that’s interesting about it to me.
- CrispySims61923 days agoSeasoned Hotshot
At the end of the day, EA is still a company who's number one goal is to make money. 95% of companies are very cash grabby nowadays to make some extra money. EA is basically just following almost every other live service game that has some kind of cosmetic store and that's totally what the Marketplace is. Realistically I think people need to look at it from another perspective in the sense that if we are truly getting no more stuff packs, game packs or expansion packs and we are just going to get mostly updates from now on. It's essentially what people online have been asking for. For them to stop releasing packs and start focusing on fixing the game, which from what I can see is what they are trying to do right now with these patches we are getting. There are a lot of bugs that seem to be much harder than other bugs to work out a fix for (photos turning black) but at least now they can focus more of the team on getting the game to a better standard. I guess I've been pretty lucky in my game that I avoid getting a lot of the major issues. I also stay away from using mods or CC as mods can be just as game breaking as some of the bugs in the game.
Hopefully you'll see a Maker Pack you like one day and I hope you can find uses for some of the items. I don't think the Markerplace is 100% unfair to creators that sign up to the Maker Program as they are very aware of what they are signing up for when they apply to be a part of the program. Yes I think they deserve a bigger cut of the sales of their Maker Packs but they knowingly signed up to the program knowing they were only getting a 30% cut.