Actually, in EA, one wanted to publish the coming DLC ”My Wedding Stories” for the Sims 4 in Russia due to the homophobic laws in Russia. But after protests from the community, the situation has now been covered again and now the DLC should still appear in Russia. Read all the details here on Meinmmo!
What is this for a DLC? For the popular life simulation game The SIMS 4 of EA is a new DLC planned. The means “my wedding stories” and turns all about marrying. You can plan and leave weddings there for your heart’s content, along with huge pies, ornate ceremonies and magnificent wedding dresses.
Actually, a nice thing that should inspire SIMS players around the world?
What is so problematic in Russia? The DLC allows – as for a long time for the Sims – also weddings with same-sex couples. The whole advertising campaign for the DLC even explicitly has the wedding of Cam (Eron) and Cathedral (Inique) on the subject, a lesbian couple. The two even the covers of the DLC.
However, the great wedding fun in Sims 4 is a controversial law in Russia. Because since 2013 so-called “homosexual propaganda” is prohibited. This refers to that it is punishable to show homosexuality positively in the presence of minors. The law has been providing internationally for a lot of sensation and protests of human rights movements (Via Süddeutsche).
EA justifies course change and moves release of my wedding stories
In this way, EA first responded: Due to the difficult legal situation, one decided in Publisher EA therefore not only to bring the DLC out in Russia. Although homosexual relationships are already possible in the basic version of the Sims 4, but since the game in Russia is released anyway only for adults, the game previously escaped an indexing.
Already in he past there were problems with homosexual content in Games in Russia. Thus, the pride-month in Lol in Russia was not applied at all and also the comic to Oververt, by turning out Tracer as gay, never came to Russia.
But since the whole marketing of the coming wedding DLC revolves around the wedding of the two women, the EA was probably initially pulled to delicate and it decided to delete the DLC for Russia.
As justification, at the time, EA was said that the story of the two women consider so important that they did not want to swipe them and therefore prefer the DLC not to bring in regions in which the love between same-sex people is a problem:
For “my wedding stories” we were happy to introduce you to Dom and Cam. Their love story reflects the experiences of so many members of our community and our team.
In the course of our development and storytelling process, we were aware that the way we wanted to tell the story of Cam and Cathedral, not something we could share in all over the world.
The ability to tell stories – no matter what – is the core of our work at The Sims. The story of Cam and Dom meant to endanger the values we live. We use ourselves for freedom to be who one is to love, who you love, and tell the stories you want to tell.
What does this mean for you, our players? We are determined to maintain this commitment by illuminating and celebrating stories such as Dom and Cam. That is why we decided to give up the publication of “My Wedding Stories” everywhere where our stories would be subject to changes due to laws.
Unfortunately, this means that members of the Sims Community in Russia can not acquire this DLC.
How did the community react? The justification of EA did not go well with various content creators. Thus, Streamerin Kayla establishes Via Twitter that EA sets a statement against the interests of homosexuals with her decision. Straight homosexuals in Russia should be ignored according to Kayla and feel irrelevant. Therefore, they will not treat the DLC in their streams until EA is still reacting.
Other users on Twitter even called for the Boycott of the DLC, as long as EA remains in his decision and prevents DLC in Russia.
That’s the situation now: In fact, it did recently come to a rethinking at EA. In a statement of 16 February was suddenly revealed that one would probably bring the wedding stories in Russia now. With the full program, including the wedding of CAM and Cathedral.
Last week we have published the update listed below for the announced my wedding stories gameplay pack. At that time we thought our team could not tell the story about the same-sex couple Cam and Cathedral in Russia, and since we wanted to enter their story, we decided not to publish the pack there.
Since then, we have been to the wishes and statements of our community, support for our decision to compassion for the other members of the community. It is just as important to us to stand for our values, which belongs to a clear view of homophobia, and to share such stories with those who wish them most and who need them most.
Against this background, we realized our options again and recognized that we can do more than we originally thought, and we will now publish the SIMS 4 my wedding stories gameplay pack for our community in Russia – unchanged And with cathedral and cam.
So it seems that the fans have made such massively for publishing the wedding DLC in Russia. However, the DLC “My Wedding Stories” will not appear as planned on the 17th, but a week later, on February 23, 2022. Remains only to hope that the SIMS 4 and the DLC do not fall victim to the laws in Russia.
Incidentally, an interesting alternative to the SIMS 4 is here: New MMORPG on Steam is mix of Sims and StarDeW Valley – can be governed by your own country