Didn’t they give away the sims 4 for free starting in 2023?
It’s no surprise that anyone who even had a remote interest in the sims might pick it up if you’re giving it away. How many of those users went on to buy their stupidly overpriced DLC? That’s what they really care about.
It’s so dumb because it would be so easy for them to use a business model people don’t hate since it’s a genuinely good game but they just won’t. If they charged like $20 for the base game and maybe like $5 each for the DLCs I would probably buy the game and a few DLCs, but all the DLCs are so expensive that my options are either play the base game for free or pirate all the DLC for free, so either way EA gets no money out of someone who would otherwise have been a paying customer