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Buying every single The Sims 4 expansion and pack can easily put a dent in your wallet worth around $1,536, but genre newbie Paralives is going in the complete opposite direction. The life sim apparently won't have any paid DLCs whatsoever, even after its early access tenure is over.
Paralives lead developer Alex Massé said as much in a recent Reddit AMA where the topic of paid expansions came up quite a few times, to no one's surprise. After all, the biggest and, for long stretches of time, only big life sim on the market regularly shoves out stuff packs, house packs, game packs, and expansion packs.
"There will never be paid DLCs, only free updates! Even after the Early Access," Massé says plainly. "As life sim fans, we wanted to make a game we would like to play ourselves without the need to purchase a lot of extra content and we are happy to deliver that."
Paid DLCs aren't the norm for games in Steam Early Access anyway - that's a given - but what about everything that comes after Paralives 1.0? Can the studio afford to keep expanding the life sim post-launch without charging extra?
Yes, apparently, and it's all because the team is substantially smaller than EA Maxis. Massé says the team only staffs around 15 people and "the sales we made so far will sustain us for many years, even if we increase the size of the team, so we're safe and really grateful for that!"
"The Patreon is being closed this week and the sales we made from the game so far will sustain our small team of 15 for many years so we are happy to be able to offer free-only updates in the future because it's what we would like as life sim fans ourselves," he reiterates in another response.
The developer's much lower headcount makes the prospect of free expansions sound feasible, especially since the team doesn't need to work on Paralives forever should it become financially tricky to do so. EA Maxis seemingly works to keep The Sims 4 going in perpetuity, hence the need for regular injections of cash, but nothing's holding back the parafolks from eventually making a sequel or another game entirely after their life sim hits 1.0.
As for what's next, the Paralives roadmap for early access includes details on gardening, pets, and changing weather. Though one thing that caught my eye in particular was the mention of pools, AKA one of the most lethal sims-deletion tools in any of the mainline games.
Paralives is usually available on Steam for $40, though a launch discounts slashes its price tag down to $36.
Are you playing the new life sim already? Be sure to check out our guides to Paralives cheats and how to get more money in Paralives.
