Sims 4 update purges 'wholly unacceptable content' from its gallery

A close up of a female sim in The Sims 4 with medium-length black hair and an off-the-shoulder orange top. She's looking off to the side with a scared expression.
(Image credit: Maxis)

Update: Sadly, it's likely the "unacceptable content" this update refers to is a spate of racist and antisemitic posts that had been ed to the gallery recently. As the Sims 4 had been experiencing a surge in racist content since the game went free to play, and it's probably the case that these updates to the profanity filter are meant to deal with that.


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The Sims 4 - A woman makes an "ah hah!" face while holding a finger in the air.

(Image credit: Maxis, Electronic Arts)

Sims 5: What we know so far

Original story: EA likes its profanity how it likes its coffee: filtered. No wonder, then, that a recent update to The Sims 4 has taken a scouring brush to the game's gallery, purging it of "wholly unacceptable content" and making updates to the game's profanity filter to prevent people from ing unwholesome content in future.

"We are aware of and have seen some select instances of wholly unacceptable content that has been ed to The Sims 4 Gallery," reads the update on EA's official Sims 4 blog, which says the game's team has "reviewed, and made critical updates to, the profanity filter to help prevent this from happening again in the future".

Unhelpfully, the post doesn't actually go into any detail about what this epidemic of unacceptable content was before exhorting players to keep an eye out for more of it in future, and it's not like the Sims is short on gross stuff. Maybe people were ing memories of that bug that made WooHooing werewolves. The possibilities are endless.

ittedly, we can probably make a pretty good guess as to the kind of stuff people were ing, but it'd be helpful to have something a bit more specific to go on than a general 'Remain cautious'. Just keep your head on a swivel in that gallery, I guess.

It's been a big year for The Sims. Not only did we all get to relive our most awkward and gangly years in July's The Sims 5 in October. It's going by the codename "Project Rene" at the moment, and beyond a brief snippet of gameplay we don't know much about it. It's super early in development though, so don't feel too bad if you recently splashed out on a load of Sims 4 DLC. It's going to be the current version for a while to come.

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.