The Sims 4 Incest Bug Appears In Latest Update
What do you play The Sims for? Whether it's to live your dreams of being a popstar or magician, having that romance you've not quite attained in real life, or simply watching the world burn by killing off your Sims in a variety of imaginative ways, The Sims lets you do it all.
The games have been going strong since 2000, and even though some of us are looking ahead at the inevitable The Sims 5, Electronic Arts is milking The Sims 4 with another huge update. The High School Years expansion has been praised for finally adding body hair to The Sims, but unfortunately, Maxis has also included an unfortunate incest bug in that definitely shouldn't be part of the story.
What Is The Sims 4 Incest Bug?
Instead of the usual paywall for updates, The Sims 4 gave us a surprise one across the board to celebrate the arrival of High School Years. Pros include more options for sexual orientation, the much-hyped addition of body hair, and (randomly) curved walls. As spotted on The Sims subreddit, some Sims are trying to date their family members since the update went live.
The issue has also appeared on the game's bug report forum, with someone writing, "The new Wants system has given my sim the 'want' to ask his twin sister to be his girlfriend." Typically, programming in The Sims should stop family members having any form of romantic interest in each other - emphasis on the should part of that sentence.
Gamers were annoyed and creeped out in equal measure. One wrote, "I genuinely don't know how they missed something as basic and obvious as excluding family members from romantic whims, specially because this is not their first 'incest' related bug, so you would guess they would have learned their lesson already." Another fumed, "EA thinks that if they can fool players into spending double the game's cost for basic features like weather, that their players are too stupid to notice these bugs."
What's The Latest With The Sims 4 Incest Bug?
Thankfully, the devs are aware of the issue and are working to fix it. Posting on Twitter, SimGuruNick said, "I just wanted to acknowledge that the want to date a family member is something we know about, we've reproduced ourselves, we're working on it. We're looking to get it fixed ASAP." By the sounds of things, it's another case of rushing out an update with dollar signs ringing in EA's eyes.
Things are a little buggy in The Sims 4 right now. We only just reported how the free update added another odd bug that affected the ageing process. If playing on the short or long ageing options, your Sims are growing at a rapid rate and going from nappies to the grave in just a matter of minutes. Sure, updated want options and a high school expansion are all well and good, but when you can't stop the basics like incest, there's something wrong here.