How many people play The Sims? — 2024 statistics

The Sims is one of the most popular video game series ever with 80 million active players.

(Source: Venture Beat)

• Officially, the most popular entry in the series was a short-lived Facebook game, The Sims Social, with 100 million registered players. 
• The Sims Social peak player count is higher than FarmVille, which peaked at 83 million in 2009.

More than 36 million unique players have played The Sims 4.

(Source: Electronic Arts Reports Q4 and FY21 Financial Results)

• There are more than 10 million players active The Sims 4 players.
• A typical week in The Sims 4 includes more than 3 million woohoos, 370K marriages, more than 120K deaths, 16.6-million-bathroom breaks, and 1.2 million grilled cheese sandwiches eaten.
• That’s in the ballpark of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at 46 million players and more popular than Teamfight Tactics at 33 million monthly players.

Being part of EA Play is perfect for a game like The Sims 4. It allows gamers to play it for a small monthly fee while accessing the game’s numerous expansions without paying extra. On the other side, it also enables EA to continue releasing new expansions. This increases long-term engagement, and thus driving EA Play subscription numbers higher. 

The Sims franchise revenue reached $5 billion as of 2019. 

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

• This puts The Sims series neck and neck to Halo which also has $5 billion total revenue.
• The series is also more successful than some super popular video game franchises.
• The Sims games sold 200 million copies across different gaming platforms. Not too shabby.

The most popular video game series ever is Super Mario, with more than 750 million units sold. That said, there are around 200 Mario games released in total. The Sims series is more successful than Final Fantasy (159 million units), Assassin’s Creed (155 million units), Resident Evil (117 million units), The Legend of Zelda (118 million units), and many, many more.

The Sims 4 yearly earnings are $457 million.

(Source: Net Bet)

• The Sims 4 expansions were downloaded 30 million times over the years.
• By 2019, The Sims 4 earnings surpassed $1 billion.
• That’s higher than Destiny 2 at $374 million and Hearthstone at $414 million per year.

EA didn’t share exact sales figures for The Sims 4. But, when looking at earnings, we see that the game is doing just fine. With almost $500 million in yearly profits and with it being one of the biggest titles available on EA Play, we reckon The Sims 4 and its expansions will continue to drive massive revenue for EA in the coming years. The Sims franchise has shown yet again its astonishing ability to adapt to the ever-shifting video game market. This time, it tackled GaaS (games-as-a-service) market and came out victorious.

The Sims is the 9th best-selling PC game of all time.

(Source: Guinness World Records)

• 16 million copies of The Sims units were shipped worldwide by February 2005.

Overall, the first game was a resounding success for EA. It sold well and became one of the cultural icons of the early 21st century. Further, while its primary platform was PC, the game’s massive success made EA bring the series to consoles. Finally, the game has sold better than Diablo II, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and Counter-Strike (all released the same year) combined. In other words, The Sims was by far the biggest game of the year 2000.

The Sims 2 sold 1 million copies in the first 10 days of release.

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

The Sims 2 continued to ride on the wave of success of its predecessor. Sales numbers were high, and the game was even better in terms of gameplay. That said, the triumph over its peers hasn’t been repeated.

The Sims 3 was the #1 best-selling PC title for 2009 in North America and Europe.

(Source: IGN)

• 1.4 million copies The Sims 3 were sold in its first week-
• In total, 3.7 million copies of The Sims 3 were sold the year it was released.
• By September 2011, EA recorded sales of 10 million copies.

The Sims 3 kept its status of critique darling, but sales slowed down a bit. Still, The Sims 3 was one of the most popular video games of the year. It fought against online-focused blockbusters such as Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 in a world that slowly shifted towards online presence and video game streaming and kept its ground.

Unlike Pokemon Go, The Sims Mobile was not a smash hit.

(Source: Sensor Tower)

The Sims Mobile was released in 2018. At the moment of the writing, the game has been downloaded more than 50 million times on Android alone. It managed to accrue $25 million in revenue during the first six months after its release. These days, the game is far from being a potent money maker.  The projected monthly revenue of the game in September 2021 is just about $700K.

This doesn’t mean EA isn’t raking in cash with its mobile games division. During the last fiscal year, EA mobile division revenue was $781 million. Not much of that money has come from The Sims Mobile. Still, knowing EA’s attempts to get the thickest possible slice of the tasty mobile gaming cake, we reckon the company has another Sims mobile project in their plans.

There are a total of 37 expansions throughout The Sims series of games.

Maxis is known to release multiple expansions for each of The Sims games they released. Each expansion brings in new content and substantial gameplay changes. To date, there have been 37 expansions released so far.

The Sims player stats

Most The Sims players are women aged 18-24.

(Source: Gamerant)

• The average age of The Sims player is in line with global trends, which put the majority of gamers (38%) in the 18-34 years category. 
• On the flip side, players enjoying The Sims are defying the trends since the gender split is 59% to 41% in the US in favor of male gamers.

Since 2000, players have created more than 1 billion of Sims.

(Source: Fun With The Sims Infographic)

• As of 2018, more than 32 million Sims have been created in The Sims 4.
• Out of the 32 million Sims, 21 million have started a career.
• Sims Created by the Series 20th Anniversary: 1.6 billion Sims. 
• For comparison’s sake, the current world population sits at 7.9 billion people.
• Back in its heyday, gamers played The Sims 3 53 million hours per month.
• In The Sims 4, 68% of players create a Sim in their own image.

Since 2000 and the first Sims title, players have created enough Sims to account for 20% of the current world population. In all Sims games, players have also created 6.9 million vampire characters.  They also made 1 million mermaid characters and 217,000 alien characters.  Creating toddlers isn’t very popular: only 173,000 have been created to date.