FreeSO

FreeSO.org Makeover

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Hello, and welcome to our new website!

As part of the work on the Archive client, we’re introducing a shiny new website and blog that can stand the test of time. This was originally designed by dotequals to integrate the FreeSO dashboard into the main site years ago, but has been retooled into a both a way to keep our old blog posts around for historical interest, and provide resources for FreeSO and the new Archive Client into the foreseeable future.

The old Wordpress blog was a poor fit for FreeSO, as it was filled with unnecessary features like user accounts and comments that demanded attention for handling user data, and used too many resources to serve what amounts to hundreds of malicious bots blasting the website looking for security holes in our plugins. These bots would very quickly overload the server with bogus requests and crash it, so it’s a relief that we’re now serving a static site that it’s a billion times harder to do that with. It’ll also be a relief not having to update it quite so much for security patches…

We do unfortunately lose the comments on blog posts and pages, though I might consider copying the existing ones over to complete the archive. Reading them occasionally made my day, so it is an important part of the development history of FreeSO. I currently have bigger fish to fry, though…

Pictured: dotequals receiving thanks for his amazing work on the new website.

Some design elements may change over the next few weeks - the landing and download pages especially when the Archive Client is released. Look forward to the most exciting 3 second click through to a download link that you’ll ever experience.

As you might have guessed, this means that the Archive Client is getting closer to completion. Don’t get too excited though, I’m not quite ready to put a date on it. Just know that the scope of the project has expanded massively, and you’ll be finding a few surprises ingame when you try it out! It’s all for a good reason, trust me…

Rhys

FreeSO Archive Progress Update

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 23:28:00 GMT

Hello, Sunrise Crater ex-residents!

How’s the homeless life treating you? Ready to experience a rush of nostalgia after only less than a year of absence? Unfortunately, you’ll have to hold it in for a little longer. But nearly all of the complicated work is done!

To tide you over, you can check out this sneak preview of the Archive Client. As well as the new interfaces for managing and connecting to archive servers, there are a huge number of optimizations and fixes that make it much easier for you to explore Sunrise Crater with an entourage of your choosing. A big improvement is 64-bit support, so that the game can properly handle hosting multiple lots for other people at the same time you’re playing. Additionally, almost all stuttering is gone from the city view, allowing you to scroll as fast as you like across thousands of lots without a fire breaking out. Technology really is amazing.

There are a ton of other tweaks to visuals and animations throughout the game. Longstanding bugs with lighting and the city view have been completely squashed! See how many you can spot in the video. (or you could just read some of the commits at https://github.com/riperiperi/FreeSO/commits/archive/ )

The archive client hosts a version of the game server that has been stripped back to remove sensitive data like user accounts entirely, where players can assume the role of any character in the city, but can still make their own sims tied to their client. Ingame user management tools allow hosts to block unwanted players through verification and IP banning. When supported, the game can use UPnP to automatically forward ports for other players to connect directly to you over the internet, so long as they have your IP. Additionally, you can still host a dedicated server with the archive data that will stay open without you needing to leave the game on! To make things easier, this configuration can be created and exported directly from the game and used with the dedicated server software. It’s not appropriate to run as an MMO server, but it could make things easier for larger groups of people exploring Sunrise Crater together.

More features are still to be added, such as configurable automated seasonal events, money/skill speed scaling and update support. Town Hall and event lot cleanups are still to be completed. We’ll also need a new launcher setup (or to fix the issues it works around), as the old one was obviously decommissioned. There are still annoying bugs that haven’t been fixed yet - some of them even appear in the video! I want the first release to be in a really nice state so that people enjoy their time rather than run head-first into hundreds of issues and lose interest.

Best place to stay up to date is on our Discord, though the final client will also be posted on here, and likely will have another Youtube video attached to it, so you can follow that too.

Thanks for your patience! – Rhys

The End

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 19:33:00 GMT

The FreeSO Server has completely shut down as of December 9th 2024. Thanks for playing!

After a week full of crazy events, we finally said goodbye to Sunrise Crater. It has been a wild ride, and I’m glad I shared it with all of you. The ending might have been a little dramatic, but I think after 8 years a boring sendoff would have been a letdown.

There were a few server hiccups due to how many people returned to see the ending, and because I unleashed the sim equivalent of a nuclear bomb on the crater, but with some tweaks it was able to mostly hold steady for the final hour. It was really nice seeing so many lots open and filled over the past week, but a bit heartbreaking to see each of them face the apocalypse. I hope you all got a chance to say goodbye.

The later events of the week were all livestreamed on my Twitch channel, so you can check out the VODs there to relive them or just see what was happening if you weren’t able to make it. I’ll probably mirror the vods on YouTube at some point. There are a lot of screenshots and videos of these events and more on the Discord server, which will remain open forever, even if it might eventually become read-only.

They shouldn’t have built it next to a Volcano.

I have to again extend my thanks to everyone who contributed objects, code, properties, ideas… really anything towards making the game as amazing as it became. There are some real unsung heroes out there, like Sim who built the and maintained the FreeSO launcher the whole time the game was up, Aquila who has been managing the community since the early 2010s, and S1ndle who contributed objects and art for nearly every single event. Later on, I’ll add full attribution for all objects, animations, accessories, events and lots on a future version of this site, so these contributions can be properly recognized.

A more unusual mention now - thank you to EA for allowing this project to exist without any kind of legal battle. While FreeSO took great care to avoid infringing on The Sims IP by being 100% free, only providing new objects, delta patches and fully recreated client/server code on top of an original TSO client downloaded for free by the user… there are other companies that don’t seem to respect this distinction and bully players out of building fan projects when it is entirely within their rights to. The Sims community is sustained by content creators and I’m glad that respect has also extended to what the FreeSO team worked towards, allowing many tens of thousands of players to experience our vision for a future with TSO in it.

TSO is a unique experience that I don’t think competes with anything The Sims has at the moment, so it really deserves to stick around. That’s why the next step of this transition includes releasing technical documentation so that future developments can begin from others, and the Archive Client so that the world we built together can be explored forever.

Technical documentation and the Archive Client will release at some point in the future. I’ll put out another blog post and a Discord ping when these things happen, so if you’re interested be sure to stick around. The website may also reshape itself on the way there, to properly honour the contributions of the community and FreeSO’s new status as a technology base for future TSO/TS1 projects.

Technical Documentation

Part of the sunsetting of FreeSO includes the addition of detailed technical docs to the GitHub repository. These will be markdown .md files that you can read on GitHub, and each will describe its own aspect of the game and how it works. The documentation will be categorized as follows:

Server Hosting
- Information about how to host the game server, and tools that server administrators can use to author their own city and push their own client updates.
- Technical information about the VPS FreeSO was hosted on, its cost and some learnings from previous server hosts.
- This section will be completed first.
Technical Details
- Technical details on The Sims, The Sims Online, the FreeSO client/server and more.
- The goal is to allow developers to pick up the project and add to it in a reasonable way without breaking anything, or causing themselves any future hassle.
- Will include information on existing PIFF object patches, what they do and if they might be FreeSO event specific.
- This section will be the longest, and may be the longest to be complete.
Issues & Future Work
- Existing issues that have been identified with the client and/or server to be fixed by someone in future.
- Previously planned features that could be picked up by someone else, as well as explanations into what they entail.

The Archive Client

As mentioned in previous Blog Posts, on “The Save Date” (December 6th) the entire server was backed up and exported to be released to the public in a playable form, and also so we could literally blow up the crater on the last two days. All of that is over, so now all that’s left to do is release the data so it can be explored at any time, by anyone. You’ll be able to do this with a special version of the FreeSO client called “The Archive Client”.

The Archive Client will allow players to explore Sunrise Crater by themselves, or by inviting other players to join their self-hosted server. Once ingame, the game will function very similarly to the FreeSO server and support all features you interact with there. Special configuration will be available when creating the server, for example one that allows the host to play the game as Admin or as a visitor, and control whether people who join them also join as admin or visitor. Other tuning, such as April Fools “features”, payout multiplier etc will also be selectable.

The client will be open source, similar to FreeSO, but it will exist in a separate repo and will NOT be network compatible. The server data will obviously be released with the client with sensitive data stripped, and converted to be compatible with the client.

All of this will take a while. I can’t give a hard deadline for this work, but the client will likely become available early next year. I worked pretty hard on all the final events, so more immediately I’ll probably be taking it easy over Christmas. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any work done, just that I won’t be going all cylinders like I did for the Finale. There is a lot to do, so it’s probably best to be transparent about exactly what needs doing.

So, here’s a rough list of all the work that needs to be done:

UI Work
- Title screen with host/join selection
- Server configuration and server join dialogs (with history/favourites?)
- Avatar selector. Users can’t select the same avatar, so there needs to be some way to track “ownership” of any avatar someone plays.
Networking
- New logon method without user/password, create/select any avatar, etc. May completely skip hosting the HTTP server.
- Maybe some way to use lot thumbnails from local storage instead of asking the server, since the vast majority will not change.
- Support for UPnP for easier port forwarding? A lot of network configurations now block it, so might not be worth it.
Database Work
- Convert FreeSO database (including functions + triggers) to SQLite compatible format
- SQLite backend for the database, may need to modify a bunch of queries for this
- Remove tables and data that contain sensitive info (users, auth, ingame mail etc)
- Process lot data to determine what objects with plugin data are accessible. Anything that isn’t needs its plugin data deleted.
- Run FSOF generation for 3d lot thumbnails. Maybe find a way to do this for 2d thumbnails too, as a few are really old or broken.
- Finalize lot links on The Final Town Hall, patch up all event lots.
Would be nice
- Automatically schedule events for certain time periods, such as the city view snow, Halloween sky etc.
  - Potentially fix the event objects to work on every year.
- Optionally, the server should be able to run separately from the game, so that the game crashing or closing doesn’t disconnect your friends. It’s not appropriate as an MMO server, but it can still work as a multiplayer server for a tight group of people.

Hopefully it isn’t too long a wait. As I said above, there will be a new blog post and Discord annoucement when the client is ready.

The Final Town Hall

The Final Town Hall Mayors and their nominated donators were working tirelessly over the last week on The Final Town Hall… and just in time for the server save, it was in a fully complete state! They’ve done a fantastic job, especially considering it was completed in less then 5 days, and all the stuff that was going on around it. I will add lot links to the event lots, staff picks and player’s choice picks myself, once the voting on those is complete and the archive client is ready to release.

Here’s the final list of contributors:

Natasha Nahdoe (M.O.M.I. Mire)
- CherryRose (builder)
Metamorphic (Meta Mesa)
- Remie L (builder)
Sparkling (Multilevel Metropolis)
- sunz (builder)
- Serinah
Tragic Hoe (Volcanic Springs)
- morgue (builder)

You’ll get to explore this lot properly when the Archive Client releases. It’ll be the main landing spot for anyone opening the archive for the first time, so people less familiar with the game can get some direction before they begin exploring.

The End

Thank you all for playing. The Finale wouldn’t have been the same without so many players, and I’m glad that everyone got another unforgettable experience out of a game that lasted almost 8 years. Entirely off the back of hobbyists and volunteers, such a long runtime and so much original content really is a blessing - even more of a blessing that so many people played for so long. All of you are to blame for making FreeSO so unforgettable.

There’s not much I can say now that I didn’t say on the 20 year anniversary post, but I can reaffirm that I do not think this is truly the end. As long as there is someone remotely interested in TSO, the game will continue to live on, even if that’s in a smaller circle or an entirely new format. FreeSO is open source, client AND server, so anyone is free to evolve it however they choose. The only difference is that it won’t be us in charge. Be the change you want to see in the world!

Whatever happens next, I’m wishing all of you the best. I’m maintaining a list of FreeSO contributors on Bluesky so that you can follow whatever anyone who helped out FreeSO is doing now, so give that a follow if you want to know what any of us are working on in the future. I’ll be adding more contributors to it as they get bsky accounts, (or… if?) so follow the list if you don’t want to miss anyone.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ccyy7boyss37jmhol22hcgs6/lists/3lcxupwtfua2k

I guess that’s it for now - next update will be on the Archive Client and Documentation.

See you around,

– Rhys

The Save Date

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 18:44:00 GMT

On December 7th 00:00 UTC (in around 6 hours), the server will shut down to perform a full data export of the database and lot/object save data. This save is what will be used for the archive version of the client. Please use today to get everything on your property in shape, as it any changes after this time won’t count. You wouldn’t want a plate on the ground to remain there forever… right?

Just before this, we will be present at the Sunrise Crater Town Hall for a countdown. You can remain home if you have some furniture you want to frantically arrange.

After the save and export is complete, the server will restart with an update that enables some experimental objects and for the last two days of the server. On Saturday night, there will be a special object distribution at the Sunrise Crater Town Hall. Then on Sunday night, the server will shut down permanently.

Check the older blog posts for more detailed information.

The Freesy

As one final gift before The Save Date, we’re running one final object giveaway event for a new object by @s1ndle called “The Freesy”. It’s a podium with The FreeSO logo and some fun interactions that you can place on your properties, that celebrates FreeSO’s almost 8 year run. Simply log into the game at any point from now to receive one in your sim’s inventory. Only one per account, since that’s how the event system works… I’ll be dropping one at every town hall too, so none of you have to do any donating! Please do not set it on fire.

Jams vs. Money Results

On Tuesday, the people of Sunrise Crater came out to earn money for the last time, and choose which was really more important. Jams, or literally anything else?

…they chose Jams. 2851-2547.

I would like to issue a formal apology for all times I have ever said a bad word about Jams or any affinity towards it. I feel compelled to say that though this affinity may seem misguided, it actually originates from a greater knowledge that many (such as myself) cannot properly comprehend. If only I had known this sooner, the game may have lived forever. If only.

Thank you all for participating, Jams, money or otherwise. The battle was well fought, with money taking an early lead but falling behind later on. I hope you all had a good time with it.

M**** is Over

If you missed the fun last night, or just want to relive it, check out the VOD of my stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2319505729

The event itself lasts for just over two hours, everything after that devolves into chaos. Congratulations to all 15 players who finished the course - it ended up being much harder than I expected. Here’s the finishing order:

Event start: (0:09:48)

Jeremiah Joints (0:45:50) (was not on camera )
Link Lancaster (0:54:47)
FlashBreakfast (0:58:55)
Cihan Rules (1:03:20)
Raeganonmics Lamborghini (1:19:02)
Andrew Arcade (1:31:16)
Jeremy Ibiza (1:37:14)
mrpenguinb (1:53:19)
John Maxis (1:59:10)
Mars Belli (2:01:44)
djchaos (2:04:19)
dotequals (2:09:11)
MonotoneTim (2:11:02)
Marlena (2:41:56)
Trica Lynn (some time before 3:02:50)

That’s all for now, but there’s a little more to come over the weekend. I hope you’ll join us for the end!

– Rhys

The FreeSO Finale

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:34:00 GMT

As you are hopefully aware by now, The FreeSO Server is closing on the 8th of December. However, we aren’t done quite yet! The FreeSO Finale will take place over the final week, giving you one final chance to experience and celebrate the game.

The final week will be packed with unique events, reruns of favourites and ways to leave your mark on the Sunrise Crater before it closes for good, on the night of the 8th of December.

Here’s a schedule of everything we have planned, day-by-day. More information will be posted on the day of each event. Feel free to pop in if you can!

Monday 2/12: The Final Town Hall

This week, the final mayoral elections of FreeSO are taking place in the following neighbourhoods:

Volcanic Springs
Meta Mesa (new!)
MOMI Mire
Multilevel Metropolis

The four mayors elected will obviously be able to shape their Town Hall one last time before the server shutdown, but in this election there is a greater purpose.

Starting on Monday 2nd, the Final Four Mayors of Sunrise Crater will be placed in charge of The Final Town Hall - a special property designed to show people accessing the Sunrise Crater Archive history told and shown by its residents, and links to the best and most unique properties across the crater. This property will be a first landing spot for users of the Archive client, so it’ll be important to make a good first impression!

Each of the four mayor will be able to invite donators and build donators to the project to help build the property, but the mayors will be in charge of the project’s direction. All organization should be done in the FreeSO Discord, so the process can be streamlined and we can build something great by the end of the week.

On Discord, users will also be able to nominate and vote for their own favourite properties of all time to link to and immortalize in this Town Hall, alongside links to all previous event lots, and a few Staff Picks.

Make sure you get your mayoral nominations and votes in this week!

Tuesday 3/12: Jams vs. Money

Over the last decade, we’ve observed an unusual obsession with a certain type of single money object. Despite having a simple animation, little visual flair, no significant difference in pay or completion time, the Canning Station has taken the crater by storm as the community’s shared hyperfixation, to the surprise of nearly everyone with some level of analytical thought. This hasn’t come without detractors, of course - big potions, gnomes and painting fans have been feuding with them since day one, chalkboard and typewriter fans have been actually making money, pinata… exists, and who can argue with a little cold calling?

On Tuesday 3rd December, we’re finally going to settle the score, letting YOU decide whether Jams truly is the king of all money objects, or if the variety and flexibility of the others outshine it.

To collect points for either Jams or Money, simply complete any money object and collect your profits. Alongside your profits, you’ll see a point added to a token in your inventory for each sale. These points will be tallied on the Jams Vs. Money Battlefield, where a live updating score will tally all points earned across the crater and display them in realtime, so you can see which team is ahead. Your personal score will remain in your inventory even after the server has closed, so your allegiance and level of dedication is permanently recorded.

As usual, this property can be visited by using the payphone at the front of your property, and selecting “Go Somewhere Nice”… but you should remember that doing money objects on any property counts, so you can use the opportunity to fill your favourite money lots one last time.

If Jams wins, we will concede that it is The Best Money Object. If it loses, however, it will be labelled as The Worst Money Object, forever. It’s this kind of decisive end result that makes The FreeSO Finale so dramatic and emotionally rewarding. Please look forward to the community meltdown at its conclusion.

Wednesday 4/12: December Fools

Remember, remember, the… 4th of December? On the 4th of December, all previous non-fire April Fools effects will be enabled. This includes some that haven’t been seen for a long time! Stack as many hats as you can, take a dip in a ball pool, and parkour around your property with a tiny version of yourself. Occasionally, you might have to get creative to talk to other sims. Remember that pressing : will get you a nice autocomplete search of every emoji that your heart may desire.

Fire will not be enabled due to the approach of The Save Date. Wouldn’t want the Sunrise Crater Archive to include a save with your limo actively burning up.

Thursday 5/12: M****: One More Platform

With players given ample time to practice their parkour skills on Wednesday, we’re going to put that to the test on Thursday evening, with an all new platforming course designed to test the limits of what insane levels you can build… in The Sims Online. There’s no strict start time for this, but it will be around 10pm GMT on Thursday 5th December. Stay tuned to this blog and the discord for more information on the course, and how to get there.

The camera, performance and general smoothness of the platforming have been improved since last time, alongside neat improvements such as regenerating health, so there will be no excuses for failure. You’ll only have yourself to blame…

A prize will be given to players for completing our killer platforming course - they will get the giant 3x3 cake from the Fructose Monsoon event, just in time to save it in your property forever. You’ll finally get that cake that She promised, all those years ago…

Friday 6/12: The Save Date

Join us at the town hall for a countdown to The Save Date - the moment where all database, avatar and lot save data will be locked in and backed up. This will be released with the Sunrise Crater Archive at a later date, where all player properties will be made accessible via a client that self-hosts a server for you to explore, potentially with friends by invitation. Much data will be wiped, so to ensure your property and all its signs are incluided (or deliberately exclude your data from being included) please check the paragraph in the shutdown blog post for more information.

We’ll likely be present at the last half-hour of the server uptime, so around 23:30 GMT on Friday 6th December. Remember that anything that happens after this point won’t be saved, so make sure everything in your property is how you want it to be! After this event, the server will be down for multiple hours to save and backup the city data.

Saturday 7/12: The Final Object Distribution

After the save date, we will make available to the community various objects with… destructive capability, and that are generally unfinished. Fire will be enabled. Most special objects will become available via the catalog immediately… though at the Sunrise Crater Town Hall at Saturday 7th December, 10pm GMT, we will be revealling and distributing a special object that the community has yearned for almost a decade. My sources tell me that the object is completely unmodified, and everything will happen exactly as expected. Please look forward to it.

The Sunrise Crater Town Hall may not be openable after this point. I’m not sure if we can reverse what will be put in motion.

Sunday 8/12: FreeSO Sunset

The sun will set on the game at midnight on Sunday 8th December. There will be some special visuals for this moment. There is no formal event planned for this time, as it’s really up to players how they say goodbye to the game, though I imagine it will be easy to find somewhere to hang out.

All of that is our plan, but you can obviously run your own events and use these tools to your advantage to have a blast on the game’s last week. Updated information on events will be made available on the dates they occur, so keep posted on the Discord and this blog!

Rhys

FreeSO Sunset

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

After almost 8 years of operation, the FreeSO Server will shut down on Sunday 8th December 2024.

We will host one final week-long event, The FreeSO Finale, featuring returning April Fools pranks and events (and some crazier ideas) before finally shutting the game down on midnight UTC of the 8th of December (9th December 00:00 UTC). There is more information at the end of this post, though another will be made closer to the start date detailing specifics.

This decision has not been taken lightly, and this blog post will explain how it came to be. But first, there is something important you should know about:

The Save Date

On the night of the 6th December (7th December 00:00 UTC) the server will be taken down temporarily, and all game data will be saved and exported. Some time after the server shuts down for good, this save data will be made available in some form so that players can explore the city offline, to visit properties across the city immortalized forever. See “Shutdown Plans” for more information on what information will be saved, and what properties/data will be omitted.

This is a perfect opportunity to finish off that renovation that you were putting off, revisit and update your property that was last opened a half decade ago, or clean up all the puddles that have been slowly accumulating over these long 8 years. Make it Christmas forever, transform the whole thing into a maze, or go full old school and make a hardcore money/skill lot… the decision is up to you! It’s the ideal moment to show off what you achieved in the game, and how you and your roommates played it.

On the final two days of operation, any changes made to properties WILL NOT be saved, so that we can unleash wilder dev objects and features onto the city as a final celebration.

Development and player falloff

Over the years, we’ve had dozens of core contributors as part of the FreeSO team. The value of their contributions can’t be overstated: huge collections of custom objects made just for FreeSO, engaging events built to handle hundreds of players, beautiful property designs and non-stop moderation and upkeep for nearly 8 years. Even longer than that, if you count the sandbox servers that built the community before the beta launch in 2017.

People move on, though. Hundreds of active players have come and gone, including core FreeSO staff members and contributors. Very few people have remained since beta began, and our team is now very sparse.

I brought FreeSO and Simitone to life because I wanted to understand more about how my favourite games worked. As I implemented new features, I had a greater understanding of not only how the games functioned, but why they were made that way in the first place. It deepened my connection to them, so things went quickly as I jumped from feature to feature. Eventually, no more mysteries remained, and there was much less motivation to develop as frantically as I had been. Towards 2020, the majority of my time was spent on events and new features, which were more interesting than cleaning up loose ends. I really burned myself out on the events in 2019, they were our biggest yet and we pushed very hard to get them out in time. I imagine the rest of the team felt the same way. It wasn’t really fun anymore, so I started working on other software development projects on the side.

Recently, each time an event comes around for FreeSO, I find it hard to do much of anything for the entire month leading up to it, as I feel like I’m obligated to produce content for the event. When I’m doing something else, I feel bad for putting the event work off, and when I’m trying to do the event work I find it really hard to stay focused, as it feels like I’m forcing myself to do it. Events have proven to be important to encourage players to stick around, but it’s having a really negative effect on both me and the other staff members to continue producing them without actually wanting to. Without events, our shrinking player count would diminish even further, slowly killing the game and piling on the pressure. The project is meant to be a hobby project first and foremost, not an obligation.

Additionally, there is a huge amount of technical debt in FreeSO that has racked up over the years. For a start, it still runs on .NET Framework 4.5, which was published in 2012. Modern .NET is much faster, much more capable, and much more future-proof. However, many libraries FreeSO uses need to be heavily modified or upgraded multiple major versions to gain compatibility with .NET 8. One of these libraries is the core networking library Mina.NET, which has been long abandoned and causes some of our deeper rooted networking reliability and performance issues, so it would need to be entirely replaced. Additionally, content management needs to be entirely rewritten to make memory usage more predictable, as visiting too many lots can leak too much memory and crash the game. Resolving all of this means a lot of work that needs to go into the FreeSO client and server without any interim updates to the game for existing users. It’s a huge investment, and a lot of uninteresting work rewriting code instead of doing something new and fresh.

Users who have been here for years without many updates get frustrated with the game’s lack of progress, and start to take it out on other players, staff members, and just bring negativity to the community as a whole. it’s difficult working on large changes when they can be negatively viewed by players, or disregarded. While not everyone is like this, it creates a horrible atmosphere and causes more people to leave, users and staff alike. This isn’t anyone’s fault, this is actually an observable end result of stagnation in any community, even outside videogames. Like a failing marriage. Okay, maybe not.

People start demanding things that are either impossible due to legal implications, or insurmountable due to lack of developer or artist interest. I can’t ask for more from the people who contributed so much to the game when I can’t give any more myself. While it’s easy to find people who would like to make unique content or develop deeply integrated gameplay features, it’s much harder to find people who can and will make it happen. The intersection of TSO hyperfocus, hobbyist game developer and people willing to do it for free turns out to be very small. If they were around, they’d already be working on FreeSO. They did already work on FreeSO.

Since I stepped away from development in 2020, I’ve maintained that the game should remain online as long as possible so that people can experience the game for themselves, as it’s an important part of video game history, and an experience I don’t think can be found anywhere else. I think we’re approaching “as possible” - the player count has diminished significantly and it’s becoming increasingly hard to play the game the way that you’re meant to. Still an insane run for an extra 8 years of a 2003 MMO that flopped so hard they had to change the name, but perhaps a losing battle from the start.

We’re calling it here because leaving the game with an unplayably low player base for another year or so wouldn’t be fair to everything that has gone into the FreeSO project. It deserves to be remembered for its high points; when the community banded together to meet a crazy goal, showed up to a (huge!) mock award show and led their teams to victory (or near-victory…). I’m hoping that in the final month of the game, and in our final events, you’ll help recreate that feeling one last time.

Shutdown Plans

The Sims Online shutdown was particularly devastating, as all game data and playability was lost the moment the servers shut down. We aren’t EA, though - unbound by The Sims franchise and fully open source, we can preserve Sunrise Crater so it can always be revisited. All property and person data for the city will be saved on The Save Date (Dec 6th) and released after the final closure date. All sensitive data will be removed, but there should be enough to browse the city and check out, even some historical properties that you might not have been to in years due to absent owners.

The following data will be removed:

User account sensitive information: email address, authentication, bans, device/network identifiers
Lot ban/admit lists
Private messages (“emails”)
Plugin data for objects that are unreachable, such as signs and card table (Ban All/Admit List set on property, or object not reachable by visitors)
Election votes and ratings
Any rule-breaking lots/avatars that might have been missed when the server was active

This information will be released some time after the final closure date. There’s some work that needs to be done to automatically remove the information above, and ideally some way to plug it into the client to explore it yourself.

Finally, a document detailing the server software, related apps and a roadmap for future development will be released for anyone who wishes to tackle it, or simply understand the situation the project is in. I do believe someone out there might be able to do the project justice, but they might not show up for years, or even decades.

FAQ

Why run the Halloween event and introduce a new object if you’re closing the game?

As I mentioned above, FreeSO’s events are a huge part of its community spirit. I think that the Halloween events are some of our best, so I felt it was appropriate to run it one more time to give people another chance to enjoy themselves, and make it somewhat clear that it was the last time. The “new object”, being the book of hiding, was actually created a few years ago, but never properly released due to development troubles. Making it available ensures that it has a chance to be appreciated and experimented with, as it’s an impressive object with some cool uses.

Despite the decision already being made, it also served as proof for why development has to formally end. I had a lot of trouble forcing myself to program the NPCs and objects for this event, and it stopped me from doing anything else in the entire month of October. I definitely can’t do it again. S1ndle handled nearly all of the event planning and lot design, and the event wouldn’t have been done without him.

Why not just say you’re done with development and just continue running the server?

Saying that there will be no more development/events would immediately slash the player count, which would kill the game faster. Additionally, one of the largest burdens of running the server is moderation, which doesn’t ever go away. Without any moderation, the rules can be broken freely and the game becomes a lot less fair. This has already started happening, as nobody remains with the drive to enforce them.

Running the game events also requires development effort. Game updates are surprisingly manual, NPC programming is literally just programming - I have to make routines for their idle animations and spawning behaviour, and creating new objects for people to win in events takes a lot of investment. Updates need to be prepared and released to trigger a lot of game events and catalog changes. No matter how much of the event is completed by others, I’m the bottleneck that pushes it to the server, administrates and launches it.

Why not hand the game over to someone else? My girlfriend’s uncle’s cat seems interested in hosting…

The operation of FreeSO has always depended on trust. Staff members come from interaction with the core team, and a desire to create and share game content with the community. The core admin team is an extension of this, made up of those I’ve interacted with a lot and trust deeply. This level of trust keeps the game with a consistent vision, operating smoothly and keeps user data safe. I don’t know what someone outside this circle would do with the game data, or the direction of the game, so I couldn’t comfortably hand off Sunrise Crater to a random user. There is a huge amount of responsibility and presence required for hosting a server of this scale. Obviously, none of the internal team want this responsibility either, as we chose to shut down the server.

Additionally, someone else hosting would not solve any problems with content drought, especially if they want to stick to legal avenues (not just ripping content from commercial software or TS1 cc sites), so the game would likely wither and die anyways (see first question’s answer).

Coming out of this server closure, I do have to say that you should be cautious about who you give your information to on the internet. This might not come as easy to anyone used to the current internet where everything takes place on like five social media sites, but anything else is literally the wild west. Some existing private servers were mostly founded by users banned from FreeSO for extremely inflammatory behaviour towards other players. I would not trust them with my first name, let alone anything else. Just make sure you use a unique password, and be careful where you’re typing it (ideally, not in discord).

I’ll pay for the server to remain up!

This has never been an issue. FreeSO is a hobby project and is not sustained by donations; only creative input, moderation and open source development. Server expenses are paid out of pocket and honestly weren’t much of a concern.

Was this a snap decision?

A lot of these issues have existed since 2020, most notably my absence outside of game events. The plan was finalized some time in September (it was even teased in the Halloween event image), though you can see from us missing the AFAs this year that issues go further back than that.

Is EA responsible for this decision in any way?

No. EA took a hands off approach with FreeSO, and I’ve been grateful that they afforded us the opportunity to run the project without opposition.

Why are you stepping down in particular? What will you do now?

I wouldn’t have done this for more than a third of my life if I didn’t love the game. If I had anything left to give, I would be giving it right now. I’ve needed to move on for some time, and to do it I really do need to say 100% that I’m done.

I’m personally going to focus on building a technology base for me to make my own games and experiments that might turn into something greater. It will likely be life simulation related, but not an MMO. If I do anything interesting, I’ll post about it at https://bsky.app/profile/riperiperi.bsky.social , and maybe some other places.

I’m also happy to share any socials for anyone else who was on the team in a future post. I’ll likely release some kind of rundown of all the FreeSO events/objects and who contributed to them, as some great work was done over the years that can’t go unappreciated.

A message from Game Admin Véliocasse

As lead admin of FreeSO since its creation, I thought it was time to share my own take on the closure. This project has been a huge part of my life for almost a decade, and looking back, it’s impressive how far it’s come. I was here at the start, building up the team, bringing in most of the staff, and making sure things ran smoothly from day one.

Over the years, I’ve worn a lot of hats—organizing events, troubleshooting, managing the team, handling the usual mess that comes with any long-term project. Whether it was planning big community events or taking on day-to-day issues, I was often the one stepping up to make sure things happened. And honestly, that work has been both rewarding and exhausting. Like Rhys, I feel the weight of it. Nearly a decade in, I’m worn out, and as much as I value everything we’ve built here, I feel ready to move on.

To the staff, I want to say thanks. You all brought something unique to FreeSO, and it wouldn’t have been the same without your effort and dedication. Whether it was helping with events, working behind the scenes, or stepping up whenever we needed it, I’m grateful for the part you each played in keeping things going.

So, as we wrap things up, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. It’s been a long journey, and though it’s time to close this chapter, I look back with a lot of respect for the work we did together.

– Véliocasse / Aquila

The FreeSO Finale

As I mentioned, I think our events have been the height of the game’s activity and community spirit, so what better way to finish our long saga than host an event to coincide with the ending.

In the final week of the game, starting on Monday December 2nd, the FreeSO Team will run final events daily until the game shuts down. These will include the following:

Jams vs Money: The ultimate showdown
- Are jams really the best? One day of non-stop grinding will decide it all.
Event Lot Tour - see event lots from across the game’s lifespan
- Mazes and Escape Rooms from these properties will be functional!
April 1st medley: ALL effects on one day.
- Some features, such as Direct Control, will be enabled all week.
The return of M****: One More Platform
- His city-wide return, followed by a platforming gauntlet that might be even harder than last time…
PeeSO (yes, it’s back)
The Save Date: countdown at Sunrise Crater Town Hall
Post Save: distribution of Forbidden Objects, beginning with a Town Hall event.
- We will split the atom

…and possibly more. Players can run their own events, and we will leave the true end of the game on the 8th for players to say their own goodbyes in their own way.

More information on the timing of these events will appear in a followup blog post. Just know that everything will happen on the final week - up until then, remodel your property for The Save Date, host your own events with your friends, and generally enjoy the game in its last month.

As a final note, I expect this announcement, and especially the final event to alter the player count significantly. No matter what happens, the server is closing on December 8th.

Thank you all for playing the game for all these years.

– Rhys

Madge’s Spook-tacular Candy Bash

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 15:04:00 GMT

Greetings fair resident of the Crater!

I, the great Madge Cal, Wonder Witch of the Hallowed Village, have an announcement to make!

With the destruction of the Abyssal Torment Manor, the redevelopment of the Hallowed Village into luxury condos, and my parole over and done with. I’ve no reason to stay within the confines of the Crater anymore, and have decided to be a Wonder Witch elsewhere…

But I, your long-time magical friend, refuse to leave without a proper goodbye. Which is why I am cordially inviting you to my going away Halloween Spook-tacular Candy Bash at the scenic Party Island!

Simply call a taxi to get there, it’s super easy:

There will be music, dancing, and of course, candy-galore! It simply wouldn’t be a Halloween party without candy! However there’s a rather slight problem at hand. The closure of the Sunrise Crater Candy Foundry after that awful caramel explosion has made the general candy supply rather scarce, but I have it on good authority that there is just enough candy remaining in the Crater to ensure this party will be a success! I just need everyone to bring some…

Gather up as much candy as you possibly can by any means necessary, and bring it to the party venue. Mr. Tickles will keep track of it, and I will make it worth your while with these fabulous prizes that I found while cleaning out my closets!

What is number 8, I hear you ask? You’ll just have to see. This will be your last chance to collect candy for me and Mr Tickles, so bash those zombies like you mean it!

Yours, – Madge Cal

PeeSO

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 12:39:00 GMT

User feedback is a major focus when it comes to running FreeSO… except when the feedback is just bad. However, last month our community unexpectedly united over one single complaint. After suffering for 8,823 days, our users had finally had enough with Sims’ blue pee. It just doesn’t make any sense, looks way too drinkable and it’s aesthetically unpleasing. Goodness knows how the rest of the Sims community has been putting up with this if the TSO community was the one to snap. You’d think someone would have modded it by now…

Seeing feedback that wasn’t just “disable motives” or “remove interactions” caught us by surprise, so we absolutely had to act upon it. After a greulling development cycle, we think we have something that everyone will be happy with. No more blue pee.

Please take a moment to watch the video we’ve prepared for the reveal of this much requested feature. By YouTube standards, three minutes is a blink of the eye, so it should be a breeze to watch.

Watched the video? Good. You may notice that pools are yet again filled with these same plastic balls. Please take a short moment to ponder the implications, and quickly move onto thinking about the next Jam money object day.

To make this experience even more immersive, we have also enabled 1st person control to allow users to get up close and personal with the new puddles. You’ll finally be able to experience exactly where pee is stored first hand. Just keep them away from fire.

Rhys

First Person Sims (FPS)

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 18:52:00 GMT

The Sims Online is all about escapism, living your life as someone else and enjoying experiences you never would in real life, like dying without consequence and property ownership. Despite the allure of this premise, the game hasn’t garnered the millions of players it deserves. Why?

We played GTA Online for five seconds and immediately understood the problem. You can’t feel like you’re committing hundreds of crimes a minute from a third person view. “Be somebody. Else.”? More like, watch somebody else enjoy a ball pit hot tub in an extravagant mcmansion. That should be YOU!!!

Starting TODAY, you can control your sims directly. No need for pesky “go here” interactions, taking boring fast straight lines to where you want to go. Take the longest path you want, run in circles, this is TRUE freedom. Everyone else will be able to see EXACTLY what you are looking at, with 32-bit floating point precision. Tell them how you feel to their (virtual) face. It’s like you’re living a Second Life, and it’s never been done before.

Instructions:

Press TAB to switch into first person view. Use WASD or the arrow keys to move, and the mouse to look around. Click on objects as usual to open the pie menu. Hold shift to sprint. Press backspace to cancel the active interaction. Press Escape to release the mouse, though opening a pie menu, dialog or chat will also do this. Click on the game to refocus mouse controls.

Note: You must use 3D mode to experience First Person Direct Control. Otherwise, you will just see everyone else having fun.

Soon, you might be WSAD’ing cars off the sheer drops around your flattened lots. You will be fighting to the death in a city spanning battle royale. You will be purchasing so many hats and gun skins that reality will lose its meaning, and you’ll be left living a cold husk of a life kept afloat by images generated by an unfeeling machine. Who knows where the future may take us?

20 Years of The Sims Online

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 18:00:00 GMT

Today marks 20 years since The Sims Online was officially released.

On release, The Sims Online was pitched with the potential to become the biggest MMO in the world, right off of the massive success of The Sims. The deep simulation and interactions of the original, combined with the creativity of millions of players around the world. What the world expected was another smash hit success - video gaming taken by storm by the most ambitious entry in the series yet… but The Sims Online was not The Sims. The same base simulation, but a completely different game, it simply couldn’t capture the same audience. It was hard enough to understand why The Sims worked so well in the first place.

After just under 6 years, and an incredibly awkward attempt at a reboot, all cities were closed for good. Despite this, years of communities devoted to the game kept interest alive for almost a decade. That kind of following is hard to come by. I remember personally checking the http://niotso.org blog religiously for months. After almost a decade of spinoff games trying to recapture the feeling, and many failed restoration projects, we finally emerged with something resebling the original game. Now, it’s scary to think that FreeSO’s servers have now been running for more days than it.

I don’t think the experience and feeling that this game provides has ever been replicated by another game, and I’m starting to think that it won’t ever be. Second Life never had the depth of interaction. Habbo Hotel never had the sense of reality. It’s a product of its time, a piece of history that deserves to be preserved for as long as possible. FreeSO is our attempt at doing that, though it has its limits as a reimplementation. While adding new things lets us envision a future TSO never had, it’s limited by our own interpretation of the original formula. Maybe one day, there should be a decompilation project to ensure that the true original is preserved too.

For me, FreeSO was an opportunity to fully explore a game that I never had the opportunity to play during its heyday. My only experience with The Sims Online was downloading the trial when I was too young to play, then eventually rediscovering and binging it weeks before the announcement of its shutdown. Its lasting impression was strong enough to drive me to dedicate years to the project, which I don’t think any other piece of media could have managed. Thanks to The Sims Online, I’ve had the opportunity to learn how my favourite game series works behind the scenes, and I love every piece of it.

While I never got to experience the “core gameplay” with FreeSO, I got something a lot better. I hung out on lot servers hosted by friends between developing new features before we even launched, messing around on a half-broken game. I looked forward to events with brand new objects created by the most talented people I know. Each and every time, I remember it as if I were there in person. No wonder the community lay dormant for 10 years, if moments in the game were this unforgettable.

I hope that we’ve been able to rekindle some of that spirit for you, too. Thanks for making the game the best it can be. If you log in from any point from now until the end of the year, you’ll receive a Simmy to celebrate.

Rhys