Server shutdowns claim another victim: The Sims Mobile will disappear for good in January

Sorry, Sims fans, but I have bad news for those of you who enjoy doing all that sul sul stuff on your mobile devices. Today’s update will be the last: The game is being delisted on October 21, and the servers will be switched off on January 20, 2026, rendering the game unplayable.

Today’s update will disable real money transactions in The Sims Mobile, but will grant players unlimited energy to “make it easier to complete projects and enjoy the last few months of play.” The game will roll along until January 6, 2026, at which point all Build Mode and Create A Sim items will unlock for all players, with no level-based limitations–everyone gets everything.

“We want to give everyone the opportunity to build their dream home, design their perfect Sims, and experience everything TSM has to offer before the servers close,” EA said in the shutdown announcement. “We would love to see what you create if you would like to share it with us.”

Seems a little weird to me that EA isn’t just doing that right from the hop. The game is cooked anyway, so why not just open the floodgates and let players go ham? At a time like this I can’t help but think back to Gary Larson’s famous pearl of wisdom: No size restrictions and screw the limit.

In any event, players will then have 14 days to go to town in whatever ways they wish, after which it’s all over: “The servers will shut down at 1:59 PM UTC [on January 20, 2026]. After this time, The Sims Mobile will no longer be playable. Because game progress is stored on our servers, saved data will no longer be available.”

The writing’s been on the wall for The Sims Mobile for some time now. EA ended new in-game events in January 2024, although it continued to replay previous events. And the lack of crossplay with the persistently popular Sims 4 means it’s never been really an essential Sims experience.

Still, it’s been a good run—The Sims Mobile went into full release in March 2018, a year after being soft-launched in limited markets for testing, and the disappointment on the Sims Mobile subreddit runs pretty deep.

Wtf? Are they serious? from r/SimsMobile

In the memory of TSM from r/SimsMobile

Comment from r/SimsMobile

I guess it’s time to say good bye to all of this 🙁 from r/SimsMobile

Comment from r/SimsMobile

The takedown also feels a bit strange in light of the unclear future of The Sims. EA remains cagey about Project Rene, the next major Sims game, and in the meantime has been clear that The Sims 4 is going to continue carrying the water for the foreseeable future. So why not The Sims Mobile too? Everything’s in place, it’s not taking up development resources, and surely server maintenance can’t cost that much—why not let it continue to grind out a few bucks every month until whatever’s coming next is ready for the spotlight?

I don’t know, and no doubt the situation is more complicated than I make it. If nothing else, though, the end of The Sims Mobile is yet another reminder of the ethereal nature of game ownership in the digital era: It’s your until someone decides it’s not.