Is SimCity 4 Really Dying?

[Propfam 2,286]

Is SimCity 4 really dying? I'm sorry but I'm living in the cave right now. I suddenly heard that many sites are dying at the same time. Is this the end of SC4 that we know it today?

Note: I'm also want to said that city builders are dying too. But since Theotown got so popular in Indonesia, it's not gonna happen. Speaking of Theotown, should we accommodate those people here?

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

Hiya.

I felt this should be a separate topic rather than a Quick Question so I split it out. 

-Cori (doing the admin thing)

[brancra 1,060]

17 minutes ago, Propfam said:

Is SimCity 4 really dying? I'm sorry but I'm living in the cave right now. I suddenly heard that many sites are dying at the same time. Is this the end of SC4 that we know it today?

Note: I'm also want to said that city builders are dying too. But since Theotown got so popular in Indonesia, it's not gonna happen. Speaking of Theotown, should we accommodate those people here?

"Dying" is too strong a word. Yes, Hide Inoki shut down. It isn't 2005 with multiple BAT releases every day.

But there are still plenty of players, customizers and coders. SimCity 4 is still seen by many people as the gold standard of city Sims. The sheer number of mods, aesthetic and practical, have kept the game moving forward 23 years after it's release - one of only a few games with this kind of lasting impact, really.

As long as people still play and create and share their works, the game isn't going to die.

[nos.17 5,112]

Where have you heard that many sites are dying?

Hide and Seek did go offline, but we had more than a year's notice, and practically all of the content has been backed up between the Wayback Machine and personal collections. It'll all get rehosted sooner or later.

The best data we have, via Steam Charts shows a pretty stable trend, with 300-400 average players per months, 600 peak, for the last three years. This is also only representative of a percentage of players, as many others are also playing via GOG or EA/Origin, which are obviously not tracked here.

Let's not overreact. 

 

Edit: here's the last 5 years of peak monthly player count via Steam. How would you interpret this data?

  Edited February 7 by nos.17  

[Girafarig 1,379]

Yes, SimCity 4 is dead!

Dead serious about getting more content out to play!

[Ulisse Wolf 4,399]

1 hour ago, Propfam said:

Is SimCity 4 really dying? I'm sorry but I'm living in the cave right now. I suddenly heard that many sites are dying at the same time. Is this the end of SC4 that we know it today?

Note: I'm also want to said that city builders are dying too. But since Theotown got so popular in Indonesia, it's not gonna happen. Speaking of Theotown, should we accommodate those people here?

TheoTown members are welcome in Simtropolis, and if there is activity, we can also set up custom spaces for them.

Personally, I consider TheoTown mediocre as a city builder because it seems like a poor copy of SimCity 4 and Cities Skylines.  

Furthermore, TheoTown was originally developed as an Android game, which explains its mediocre quality.

[EastChapel 115]

The game will only die when the community does. As someone who comes and goes from games often it's pretty clear that the core community here is reasonably stable. We still have people enjoying the game and pushing it to it's limits.

Should be noted too, Reddit has a pretty active SimCity 4 sub with both posters and consumers of content.

So no, not dying, though it would be nice to get more people into the community.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

A couple of graphs...
 

Note: Data is filtered to all the main SimCity 4 STEX categories (not other games or club files).

 

Note: Data is filtered to all the SimCity 4 forum categories (both the Players and Builders forums combined).

The data here shows a regular number of STEX files uploaded (943 files at 38 per month).

The SC4 forums maintain a steady amount of activity (19,382 posts at 775 per month, which equates to 26 per day).

Although there will always be natural fluctuations between different years, there is no significant downtrend. There was a bit of a dip in May-June last year, but countering this we saw a massive quantity of SC4 posts in Jan-Feb of 2025. I think it's safe to say SC4 remains alive and well.

Absolutely, the sole reason is due to the global community we are, which keeps the game's heartbeat strong. Long may it continue!

[Silur 3,302]

Many thanks to everyone who makes this site alive! 
I come here from early morning until late at night many times. 
Good luck and health to everyone who supports SIMTROPOLIS!

[paulmc 391]

21 hours ago, brancra said:

As long as people still play and create and share their works, the game isn't going to die.

Well said, and it remembers me of the The Three Deaths of a Person

The concept of the three deaths of a person, often addressed in a metaphorical or philosophical context, refers to physical death (the end of biological life), social death (being forgotten by the people who knew you), and spiritual/legacy death (when your name or works are completely forgotten by humanity).

1st Death – Physical:
It is the cessation of vital functions, when the body stops working, ending the person’s physical presence.

2nd Death – Social/Memory:
It occurs when the last person who remembers you dies or forgets you, erasing your existence from collective memory.

3rd Death – Legacy:
It happens when your name or the works you created are completely lost, forgotten, or destroyed, and you no longer have any impact on the world.

Obviously SC4 is not a person but a game, however most of it may be applied , while there is a game to be bought/downloaded, and people playing and discussing, creating new content, the game will be fine. Besides I played for a long while without being counted for on the official amount (GOG, Steam, etc ), and there is a lot of people still in this situation. This is an interesting discussion though, and it is important for us SC4 lovers to not let it die. 

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

Is SimCity 4 dead? Strong no, I don't think it would be dead if it didn't have a resilient community still playing and modding, with extremely advanced accomplishments like DLLs, a mod manager and significant updates for core functional mods.

Is SimCity 4 past its prime of popularity in its genre? This one's an easy yes when considering how the player base has declined from its peak, and how several more recent city simulator vidoegames have much larger player bases. But, for a 23-year-old videogame, it has an impressively large and dedicated audience.

 

If your involvement in SimCity 4 depends on having a large community, easy time in terms of compatibility with current computers and operating systems, and playing a 'current' videogame with official support, then this isn't the game for you. But, if you appreciate it for what the game is and what its community has done for it over the years, I'm sure you can recognize that partaking on this city simulator is still worthwhile.

[Tarkus 6,932]

The release of the original Cities: Skylines in 2015 ended up wounding SC4's popularity pretty substantially, simply because C:S was the first city-sim since SC4 to not be a complete disaster at launch.  10 years ago, this would have been a straightforward question to answer.  As far as 2026 goes, however, it's more complicated.  C:S itself is now almost 11 years old.  Its sequel is now nearing 3 years, and unlike the original, C:S2 had a disastrous launch and a number of scandals since, ultimately leading to Paradox cutting ties with developer Colossal Order.  That whole franchise lost a lot of the goodwill that had been showered upon it. 

Meanwhile, we're still here discussing SC4.  The SC4 forum post stats @Cyclone Boom shared for ST look about like those of SC4 Devotion's forums did 10 years ago.  Traditional forums in and of themselves have undergone a decline in past decade, with Reddit, Discord, and social media all taking a substantial bite out of their activity, regardless of topic.  While accordingly, ST post stats may not be quite as accurate a barometer of SC4 popularity and community health as they may have once been, it's worth noting that the monthly SC4 forum posts at are fairly consistently hovering around that 775 posts per month mark, with occasional peaks and valleys, and the STEX upload stats are remaining fairly consistent as well.  That's still a pretty solid indication that SC4 isn't getting any less popular (or more dead).  The main SC4 subreddit, /r/simcity4, has generally been trending upward with its stats, and there's been perhaps more mainstream gaming media coverage of SC4 in the past couple years, because of the DLL mod advancements.  

SC4 survived getting "wounded" by C:S's launch, and while it's fairly obvious it's not going to get back to mid-00s "Golden Era" levels of activity without something truly miraculous happening, the overall trend seems to be that the current activity levels are being sustained at minimum, and possibly inching slightly upward.

-Tarkus

[Jamesthe1st 24]

The game is still easy to buy and download and the community is still kicking! There have been some great mod breakthroughs with the DLL mods in the past year or so so there isn't a better time to get into this classic game. I've been playing SC4 and been around Simtropolis since it first came out and the DLL mod advances would have completely blown everyone's minds back then.

[user_838230 2]

Yes, it's true, new players will say that the graphics are boring... But the game will live on as long as it lives in the hearts of its fans...

[Lab Rat 12]

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