The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies is a bit of a mish-mash expansion. Its core mechanic is a simple one – a new function that allows any lots (or segmented lots) to operate as a small business – but it also packs in an electric range of other features and hidden secrets, to bolster its content and justify its status as a must-have expansion. While it doesn’t get all the way there, Businesses & Hobbies still allows for fresh new gameplay options, and all its stranger inclusions add to the flavour and pizzazz of this particular pack.
Prior to the release of Businesses & Hobbies, the biggest criticism lobbied its way was its seeming familiarity. Get To Work already allows Sims to create their own businesses, and so, this expansion was seen as extraneous. It’s hard not to point out the two packs are interrelated, but I do think Businesses & Hobbies differentiates itself enough from its predecessor.
Small businesses are much easier to run with this pack, and the inclusion of a new kiosk, business purchasing options, and business-related skill trees make your proprietor journey a bit more streamlined, and a lot more interesting. New inclusions like sales cabinets which automatically price and sell items, are also a notable inclusion that make establishing a shop much simpler.
These aren’t the only features going for The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies, though.
Tattooing and Pottery are fun new hobbies to learn
Tattooing and pottery are positioned as the big “headliner” features of this pack, with both introduced as robust new hobbies and skills to learn. Surprisingly, these aren’t actually the headliners of the pack at all – rather, they’re fun new skills to learn, but not necessary for enjoyment.
In both cases, these new skills can be learned by installing a particular item – a pottery wheel, a tattooing station – and then it’s a matter of learning basic skills, building them up, and then being able to monetise those skills. Tattooing is pretty fun, and the added pressure of getting it “right” for your eventual guinea pigs makes the process a neat challenge. For the artistically-minded, there’s also the added bonus of getting to spend time designing your tattoos from a range of options.
Read: The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies – Every major new feature
Pottery is my favourite of the two new hobbies introduced, though. Taking to a pottery wheel, your Sim can now perfect the art of shaping clay, forming a variety of unique items to decorate home spaces, or sell on to other Sims. The animation work here is great, and it’s compelling to watch your Sim pottery form on the bench. With an added kiln item, you can also pop your pottery into the oven with a range of glazes, and see what beauty results.
It’s great to see this particular hobby return from The Sims 2: FreeTime, and it feels well-implemented into the expansion pack.
But as mentioned, while pottery and tattooing technically headline the pack, they’re not the main reason why Businesses & Hobbies is so enjoyable. That’s all down to the options provided by new small business setup tools, and the freedom allowed for your next big venture.
Setting up a small business
When you set up a small business in The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies, you can pick the name of the business and its logo, the activities taking place in that business, an entrance fee, a price modifier, and your target customers. These allow you to pinpoint what your business’ intentions are, and who you want to visit your business.
From a selection of dozens of business activities, you can define behaviour for a museum, a shop, an art gallery, a bar, a theme park, a nursery, and more. There are presets to help you get started, or you can simply figure out what you want your vibe to be from a drop-down list.
These activities aren’t limitless, and you can only select five activities for a single business, but they proved more than enough to get my first small business idea started: an antique and comic shop, with an added cafe. My activities were “Be Friendly, Browse and Buy Items, Drink Coffee, Drink Tea, and Read.”
With one employee on board to tend my coffee counter, I was able establish my dream shop-cafe, and watch as slowly, more folks discovered my small business and begin to invest their time in exploring it. Mums walked in with their kids, browsed my wares, grabbed a coffee, then sat down to read. Kids wandered the many aisles of my antiques store, occasionally complaining to their parent. Plenty more folks poured in for the “free” activities, sitting down to read a book and chat with their pals.
It was lovely. Eventually, it led to me getting a star achievement for my businesses, and I was then able to grab special business perks – additional tips from my customers, and the option to influence them to buy particular products. These perks exist on a sort of good-to-evil spectrum, and operate a bit like Occult trees, only the added skills will help you become better at business.
Notably, you can actually have multiple lots for your business (ie. franchise locations) once you’re sure in your skills, but they must all be part of the same business idea, defined by the same business activities and target customer base. So when you get tired of forging a path forward for your cosy cafe-shop, and you decide to start a bar for Occult Sims, you will need to sell your original business.
Personally, I did feel this was disappointing. I would’ve liked to have been able to keep my original shop while opening up a new business. You can have different Sims with different businesses, of course, but playing with a solo Sim household, I found the limitation frustrating.
It’s also worth noting there are some very rigid bounds for setting up your small business. There’s a step-by-step process to organise an empty lot to be your small business. You’ll need to spend time zoning and planning if you’re keen to add your home business to your actual home lot. In addition to this, I would’ve liked to see more activity slots in the business setup, and more activities included.
Still, the system is fun for what it is – and I greatly enjoyed being able to set up a variety of small business types, experimenting with what worked best. And when I wasn’t focussed on my latest commercial project, The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies also had plenty of other secrets to explore.
Trashley and The Urbz
This expansion pack really is a mish-mash, because beyond the expected small business features, there’s also a bunch of other weirdness waiting on the sides. For one thing, this expansion introduces a new NPC named Trashley Realpearson, who is actually several racoons in a trenchcoat, who collect garbage and artworks, and will sell them to you. Trashley is one of the stranger NPCs we’ve seen in The Sims 4 so far, and it speaks to a wonderful, well-appreciated desire to get a bit weirder with the game.
In addition – and this is something the GamesHub team only spotted thanks to Sims content creator onlyabidoang – this expansion pack actually canonises The Urbz, including its excellent handheld spin-offs. Several of the new characters in Nordhaven (a bright and minimalism new neighbourhood inspired by Scandinavia) are actually characters from The Urbz, or related to characters from The Urbz. One is the child of Urbz poster girl Jayde. Cannonball Coleman and Gramma Hattie from The Urbz on
It’s strange, and I like it a lot.
All of these inclusions add flavour and personality to The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies, and elevate the expansion pack beyond being a simple Get to Work add-on. Again, these inclusions do make the expansion pack feel a bit disjointed and thematically all-over-the-place, but they’re welcome inclusions all the same.
As a smorgasbord of new content, headlined by new, handy small business features that open up the possibilities for making money and monetising your Sims’ favourite activities, The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies still feels rich with potential. It won’t completely overhaul your gameplay experience, but it adds in a bunch of neat touches to make the experience of running a business fresh and exciting all over again.
Three-and-a-half stars: ★★★½
The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies
Platform(s): PC, PlayStation, Xbox
Developer: Maxis
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: 6 March 2025
A PC code for The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
