Hailed as one of the most revolutionary and socially progressive games ever made, The Sims 4 has helped millions of gamers across the world discover and explore parts of their sexuality and love life – all in the comfort and safety of their homes.
The EA franchise has always been at the cusp of social progression, particularly regarding same-sex relations and the LGBTQI+ community. But for polyamorous relationships, The Sims hasn’t always come out on top.
Before the polyamorous mod, if your characters in this EA game engaged in multiple romances, it was seen as ‘cheating,’ with severe consequences for your gameplay.
Relationships would become damaged and break up, people would be jealous and unhappy, and ultimately it mirrored the same kind of stigma polyamorous relationships received in real life.
Polyamorous couples were not allowed to recreate themselves in-game. And as this was a time well before polyamory dating sites, people couldn’t explore this side of their life and discover themselves.
But thankfully, these negative outcomes have since been rectified thanks to the amazing modding community of The Sims 4, namely the polyamorous mod.
The Sims 4 Polyamory Mod – Exploring Open Love
One of the biggest features of The Sims 4 polyamorous mod includes the ability for the game to enter into new types and structures of relationships. For example, couples can enter non-exclusive polyamory relationships with one another, including triads in the game.
Your Sims will not become unhappy or jealous when their partner courts another character. Additionally, the mod features ‘side lovers’, which helps facilitate ‘Vee’ structured polyamorous relationships and facilitating bisexual relationships with heterosexual Sims.
How does the AI work around the polyamorous mod? The mod affects any character who is teenage and older automatically. Each character will have a ‘preference’; two or more polyamorous characters with the same preference will get along fine.
Sims, with ‘indifference,’ is happy with anything. Some Sims will still prefer an exclusive relationship, thus recreating how real life operates and how polyamorous dating sites work.
AI Sims may also approach you about a polyamorous relationship if there is some semblance of romance pre-existing. You can also change your polyamorous Sim’s relationship preferences at any time within the action wheel.
And finally, if you want to experiment without the fear of consequences, the mod allows you to disable ‘jealousy’ as a character moodlet in the actions menu – perfect for exploring polyamory relationships. Characters will become jealous, however, if one member of a relationship attempts to romance someone outside of their triad arrangement.
Why the Polyamorous Mod is Essential – Romance with a Difference
Although in the past, game characters could have multiple polyamorous relationships at the same time, these didn’t mirror real-life structures of polyamorous relationships because often, it penalized gameplay.
This hampered creativity and control, as the game stigmatized polyamorous relationships with cliché consequences such as jealousy, ‘cheating’ ad infidelity dialogue.
Through the polyamory mod, 3 Sims can form a traditional-styled couple, with no one becoming jealous of the other within the triad.
This facet enables polyamorous characters and their players to form new family structures in-game and work well with creating a family.
Is the Polyamory Mod Safe to Download?
Mod is short for ‘modification’ and is when a group of dedicated gamers develops new content or changes pre-existing content in a game. These changes can be small, minor adjustments or introduce a plethora of new content.
The Sims 4 has an enormous modding community that continuously tweaks and tinker with the game to improve it. Mods can be installed and uninstalled with a simple click and often come with fan reviews to help you evaluate what changes it makes to the game.
The polyamory mod is a well-regarded, well-reviewed mod that only changes relationship types and emotions in Sims. It’s continuously updated to mirror the patches of The Sims 4 main game files, ensuring it won’t crash or hamper your game’s progress.
That said, many curious ad polyamorous gamers have set up campaigns, asking developers EA Games to include polyamory relationships as a default choice in the main game’s files. Who knows, the mod may become to become a default setting in the game’s main files – only time will tell if the Sims 4 is ready to leap.
