The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies Expansion Pack Releases This March

The first The Sims 4 expansion of the year has been announced, right on cue.

As part of the 25th anniversary celebration, where The Sims 1 and 2 has finally be made available on digital platforms, EA teased a new announcement is coming around the time the free base game update for The Sims 4 is launched. And this is the announcement.

The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion, the 18th expansion for The Sims 4, expands on a rather familiar gameplay feature from a previous pack, retail lots, but in a new scope: small businesses. Your Sims can now further monetise their hobbies with this pack.

Two new skills have been added with the pack: Tattooing and Pottery. Sims already can have tattoos in The Sims 4, but with the Businesses & Hobbies expansion, Sims can be a Tattoo Artist for fun and/or profit.

The pack allows Sims with the Tattooing skill to create their own custom body art by adding and combining stamps and stencils, with layers. Previously added tattoos including from other packs can now be layered. And custom tattoo designs can be shared through the Gallery.

Essentially, The Sims 4 now has a full-featured livery editor as if it’s plucked straight out of Need For Speed or any other current car racing games, but instead of placing them on cars it’s on people, well, Sims. And also a bit better, as you can also hand draw these tattoos instead of just relying on stamps to create your tattoo, whether that be exquisitely detailed art, or crummy, poorly-thought-out ones one would have permanently etched on their skin after a drunken night out.

Pottery also has some layers other than it just being a skill Sims can learn. Crafted pottery can be glazed with different finishing, and at high skill levels, Sims can create Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending and recreating broken pottery.

The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expands the feature of retail lots, added in The Sims 4 Get To Work expansion, by allowing any room of a lot to be a designated business area using the mechanic of compartmentalising rooms seen in The Sims 4 For Rent. With Businesses & Hobbies, you can run your full-time gig/side-hustle from home. Or create a commercial-residential hybrid lot where the bottom floor is the business area and upstairs is where the business owner lives.

The number of small businesses one can run with this feature depends on what packs of The Sims 4 you own. Plus, mentoring, a social interaction already available, can now be monetised as Sims can now hold classes to teach other Sims the skills they know. Sims can also hold hobby meetups, which sounds a lot like a repurposing the Clubs feature seen in The Sims 4 Get Together.

On top of all that, the pack adds a new world, Nordhaven.

The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies Features: What To Expect

• New skills
  • Tattooing: allows Sims to create custom tattoos
    • custom tattoos can be created by combining stamps (ala a livery editor seen in racing games) or completely hand-drawn
  • Pottery: create pots by moulding ceramics
    • crafted pots can be customised further with different glazes of finishing
      • Includes Kintsugi
    • pots can be sold or placed as decorations
• New system: Run a small business out of your home
  • Designate rooms for business, for employees and for residential use (similar system to For Rent where you can designate rooms for different households)
  • New Small Business Lot, for those who want to set up shop outside of home
  • Hire employees, whether that be from townies or from the family household, to run the small business
  • Business rates can be a flat fee per customer or an hourly rate, as set from the Ticket Kiosk
  • Business perks: choose an alignment on how you run businesses (Dreamer, Schemer or Neutral) and get bonuses that impact business and Sims’ life
  • Available small businesses:
    • Tattoo parlor
    • Pottery store
    • Mentorship Classes and Lectures to learn skills
    • Pet cafe (requiers Cats & Dogs expansion)
    • Dance clubs (requires Get Together expansion)
    • Arcade (requires Get Together expansion)
    • Karaoke bar (requires City Living expansion)
    • Acting school (requires Get Famous expansion)
    • Spa (requires Spa Day Game Pack)
    • Laundromat (requires Laundry Day Stuff Pack)
    • Bowling alley (requires Bowling Night Stuff Pack)
    • and more
• New world: Nordhaven
  • World event: Hobby Meetups. Meet and socialise with like-minded Sims

The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion launches on March 6 for PS4, PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA App), Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.