Maxis does away with gender boundaries in latest Sims 4 update

Character customization has long been a prominent part of The Sims games, and now developer EA Maxis has expanded the character creation options in The Sims 4 with an update that lifts gender restrictions on body types, voices, clothing and more.

Notably, the update reflects a self-professed desire at EA Maxis to make the game more appealing to a broader audience of players by removing the male/female requirement from "over 700 pieces of content" from both The Sims 4 and its various DLC packs.

"The Sims is made by a diverse team for a diverse audience, and it's really important to us that players are able to be creative and express themselves through our games," reads a blog post announcing the update. "We want to make sure players can create characters they can identify with or relate to through powerful tools that give them influence over a Sims gender, age, ethnicity, body type and more."

The Sims 4 launched back in the fall of 2014, and it's rare to see a developer make such a significant change to its character creation and customization systems so long after launch.

It's also nice to see EA Maxis making a public show of enabling a broader spectrum of representation, given that when same-sex relationships were enabled in the inaugural The Sims game, it was done by accident.