20,000 People Sign Petition For Transgender And Non-Binary Pronouns In Sims
The Sims has done well by its LGBTQ+ community. Though the team have their own pitfalls in the lack of content that isn’t behind a stuffy and rigid paywall, The Sims 4’s addition of new changes to how gender works has been progressive beyond many of its god-simulator peers. The game also often celebrates its queer fanbase and team, offering them a platform to speak on how The Sims has actually helped many people struggling with their gender identity during pride month this year.
It’s incredibly sincere and wholesome how much The Sims as a whole has done for the community - and now fans are challenging to take it one step further.
Petition For The Sims’ New Pronoun Options Passes 20k Signatures
Click to enlargeA petition addressed to EA Games by Momo Misfortune has asked for the gaming company to offer more pronoun options to The Sims 4 players to coincide with their inclusive efforts, and it’s racked up a good deal of support so far. “The Sims 4 has come a long way for members of the LGBTQIA2+ community by letting us customize gender options for our sims”, reads the petition on change.org.
“However we are still missing representation for our Transgender and Non-Binary sims. The game will use gendered language based on what body type you have chosen for your sim (masc of femme). Recent packs have been adding more gender-neutral language or choosing to call a sim by their name instead of he/she, but the gendered language still lingers.”
The petition, developed in hopes that EA would make an effort to remove the gendered language (or at least offer an option to disable it), has now reached 20,258 signatures at the time of writing, showing clearly that this is a feature that fans really want.
But, here’s the kicker - the petition was started way back in April. So has the petition worked?
The Sims 4 Respond To Pronoun Petition
Back in May, the team behind The Sims 4 made a statement in regards to the petition and the wider call for more pronouns to be added to the game to accommodate for all players.
During an Inside Maxis stream, a couple of members of the team responded to a comment asking about pronouns.
“I think to start off, as an entire team I’d say when it comes to representation, it’s not a destination”, says SimGuruDoi. “It’s a journey that we’re all continuously working towards across the board. And we’ve seen and read your comments regarding non-binary pronouns and their availability in-game. We hear you. At this time, we can’t confirm anything in regards to timing. What we can say is that for a long time, our team has been evaluating ways to add gender-neutral language while considering how complex it would be to do so.”
Though this was back in May, it seems as though the team are still serious about inviting new pronouns to the game. It’s definitely good news - we just hope they won’t stick it behind a paywall. They’re good at doing that.