As part of the Behind The Sims Summit, it was announced that there would be a new mod hub on Curseforge for The Sims 4. And it launched this week! I’ve spent a few days having a look about to see what’s what! Firstly, let’s recap on what EA said about the partnership:
For years, The Sims community has been expanded by modders and custom content creators, and today marks a big step forward in recognizing and celebrating their contributions. We’re empowering creators to give to the community by introducing a destination to host their incredible creations, and allow even more players to download user generated content for The Sims 4.
We will not require modders and creators to move to or use the CurseForge platform. This collaboration is intentionally providing a supplementary experience to existing avenues for modding as well as providing a moderated platform with an additional level of security. When downloading custom content there is some risk, so always back up your data, and proceed with caution as you venture into the world of mods.
When the platform launches, it will include content from some of your favorite creators. More to come on that and some very exciting special events soon! Be sure to follow The Sims 4 and Overwolf for updates.
Once you go to the site, you don’t need to log in to download mods, however if you do, you can track them for updates and follow favourite creators.
I used my Twitch account to log in.
From The Sims 4 landing page, you have a horizontal categories menu at the top, with a vertical list of sub categories. The main options here are Mods, Create A Sim, Rooms/Lots, Build/Catalog, Sims/Households, Worlds and Pets.
Two things immediately caught my eye here – firstly, there are several areas for content that would normally appear on the in-game Gallery. Secondly, WORLDS? At the moment, there’s only one item there, some Viking ship deco under miscellaneous, but I’m intrigued to know it this means we’ll finally get more out-the-box ability edit the worlds in The Sims 4? Time will tell!
At time of writing, there are about 1600 mods uploaded – that’s increased by about 200 over the few days I’ve been looking into it!
There is a lot of variety available; basically, there’s something for everyone!
Unlike previous games, my use of mods and CC in The Sims 4 is pretty limited, but I was happy to see a few on the first page that I recognised! I use MCCC a lot – for autosave and auto-bill pay, if nothing else – and I’ve used a few of Lil Ms Sam’s mods as well. So, I grabbed MCCC, SimDa dating app, and Wonderful Whims, as well as some hair and make up and build/buy objects. Given that everything is in one hub, rather than spread across site that I need to go hunt for, I can see more mods sneaking into my game in future!
Everything seems well organised, you download the files, and install them as normal. Load up the game, make sure that mods are enabled and that’s it.
Once you get into game, everything works as you’d expect. CC items are flagged with the spanner icon, and can be filtered as well.
If you don’t want to go down this route, don’t worry, you can still use 3rd party mods from external sites, and the gallery still works. Or if you want the best of both worlds, you can mix and match. The main goal of this partnership seems to be giving you a simply accessible, curated collection of mods in one place.
So far, so good. The biggest thing for me at the moment is everything in one place. I’m curious about how things will go moving forward, in three areas.
First, apparently one of the benefits this set up will apparently bring is that it will be more straightforward to keep mods up to date with patches.
Secondly – and this may be connected with the first – is the Curseforge desktop app. Currently The Sims 4 isn’t supported, but if you check out their roadmap, support is being worked on. Based on other modding experiences I’ve had, I’m looking forward to seeing how that will fit in. Looking at other games I have installed that are supported, you should be able to install mods directly from the app.
Thirdly, those empty categories! I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to pop up in those!
You can find The Sims 4 hub on Curseforge here.
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