Job advert appears to confirm The Sims 5 will be free-to-play

It looks like The Sims 5 could be set to launch as a free-to-play game.

Developer Maxis is currently recruiting a Head of Marketplace & Monetization for the game, which was announced last October with the codename Project Rene.

The successful candidate will “own pricing of all content in this free-to-enter game”, according to the job description, which was spotted by Sims Community before seemingly being pulled.

They will also “own Project Rene’s in-game marketplace of content and ugc (free and paid), and manage a data-informed player-centric player purchase journey – maximizing value to players, optimizing player spend patterns, and minimizing player churn”.

Project Rene’s reveal last year included a brief look at some of the creation tools players will be able to use when they get their hands on the game, which Maxis said was in early development.

It will let users play solo or collaboratively, and the same experience will be available across all supported devices including mobile.

“We are building the next-generation Sims game and creative platform,” said Lyndsay Pearson, VP of franchise creative for The Sims. “Reimagining The Sims you know and love with new ways to play. This is the future of The Sims, built on a foundation of charming Sims, powerful tools, and meaningful stories.”

Project Rene’s announcement coincided with The Sims 4 going free-to-play eight years after its original release.

Six months later, EA claimed that The Sims 4 “now reaches more than 70 million players around the world”.

It said the life simulation game had attracted over 16 million new players since going free-to-play, and that average weekly users had increased by 53 percent.

The Sims 4 was originally released for PC in September 2014 before making its way to Mac in 2015, and to PS4 and Xbox One in 2017.

The game had generated over $1 billion in revenue as of February 2019, according to EA.