The Sims 4
Play with life and discover the possibilities. Unleash your imagination and create a world of Sims that’s wholly unique. Explore and customize every detail from Sims to homes–and much more.
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The Sims™ 3 on Steam
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The Sims 3: Create the perfect world with full customization at your fingertips. Refine personalities and help fulfill destinies.
The Sims™ 3 is a life sim, simulation and character customization game
developed by The Sims Studio and Maxis
and published by Electronic Arts.
Released on January 27th 2011 is available only on Windows
in 17 languages: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Russian, Spanish - Spain, Swedish and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 31,085 reviews of which 26,422 were positive and 4,663 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified The Sims™ 3 into these genres:
Life Sim
Simulation
Character Customization
Building
Sandbox
Singleplayer
Casual
Funny
Moddable
Romance
RPG
Family Friendly
Comedy
Adventure
Replay Value
Multiplayer
Great Soundtrack
Strategy
Action
Here is the detailed breakdown of supported languages for The Sims™ 3:
| UI | Subtitle | Audio | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | |||
| German | |||
| French | |||
| Italian | |||
| Korean | |||
| Spanish - Spain | |||
| Traditional Chinese | |||
| Russian | |||
| Portuguese - Portugal | |||
| Polish | |||
| Danish | |||
| Dutch | |||
| Finnish | |||
| Norwegian | |||
| Swedish | |||
| Hungarian | |||
| Czech |
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at The Sims™ 3 through various videos and screenshots.
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
- Processor: (XP) 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent; (Vista) 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- Memory: (XP) 1 GB; (Vista) 1.5 GB
- Graphics: 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- DirectX®:
- Hard Drive: At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
- Sound:
- Built-in Graphics:
- Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
- 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
- 0.5 GB additional RAM
- Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
- Supported Video Cards:Nvidia GeForce series: FX5900 or greater, G100, GT 120, GT 130, GTS 150, GTS 250, GTX 260, GTX 275, GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 295; ATI Radeon™ series: ATI Radeon 9500 series of greater, X300, X600, X700, X800, X850, X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950, 2400, 2600, 2900, 3450, 3650, 3850, 3870, 4850, 4870 series or greater; Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA): GMA 3-Series, GMA 4-Series
- *Please note that the GeForce 6100 and 7100 cards are not supported
Steam Price & Best Deals
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Step 1: Buy the game and every single DLC. Step 2: Spend 3 hours following guide tutorials to trick a 2009 game engine into recognizing a GPU made after the Obama administration. Step 3: Install NRaas, FPS limiters, performance patches, and 5GB of custom content hair. Step 4: Finally hit Play. Step 5: Witness absolute, unadulterated peak gaming. In all seriousness, The Sims 3 is still the undisputed king of life simulators. The open world alone makes it impossible to go back to loading screens, there’s nothing quite like watching your Sim ride a bicycle across town in real time while chaos breaks out across the entire neighborhood. Create-a-Style letting you turn your couch into leather, wood, or literal brick is unmatched. Plus, having all the expansion packs and custom content installed means the possibilities (and the chaos) are practically endless. Yes, getting it to run smoothly on a modern rig feels like performing dark tech rituals and editing ancient .ini files. But once you get those mandatory performance mods running, it runs surprisingly well and is worth every single second of setup. 10/10 — I'd happily spend another two hours making a 17-year-old game recognize my graphics card just to play it again.
The Sims 3 is by far my favorite Sims game. I played it constantly as a kid when it first came out. Even though my PC at the time was terrible and the performance was often rough, I still enjoyed the game more than almost anything else. What made it even more special was that it wasn’t just me playing it but people in my family who weren’t even gamers loved it too. My aunt, my dad, my mom, my sister, and other relatives all played it. We would share CDs and expansion packs with each other just so everyone could experience the game. I honestly miss those days. I remember saving up allowance money just to buy a new expansion pack. I still remember getting Seasons and Pets and being completely blown away by how much they added. Having actual seasons, weather, holidays like Halloween and Christmas, pets running around the world. It felt incredible at the time and made the game feel alive in a way very few games do even today. Eventually time moved on, I lost my CDs, and then The Sims 4 came out. Like a lot of people, I switched over because it was the new Sims game. Looking back though, it never felt the same. So many features were removed or simplified, and so much depth from Sims 3 just never made it into Sims 4 at all. Comparing the Sims 3 base game to the Sims 4 base game is honestly depressing because it really shows how much content and ambition the series lost over time. It reminds me a lot of what happened with SimCity. After mostly playing Sims 4 throughout my teens, I randomly discovered that Sims 3 was on Steam. I somehow missed that for years, but I grabbed it on sale for around 20 euros, which felt like an absolute steal. That’s when I realized how much I truly missed The Sims 3. Back when I originally played it, I never experienced most of the expansion packs, so coming back to it now completely blew my mind. There were so many cool features and mechanics I had never seen before because I simply didn’t own those expansions as a kid. It also made me realize just how weak Sims 4 feels in comparison. Sure, Sims 3 can still be a little unstable or performance-heavy on modern systems, but honestly, mods and community patches fix most of the issues. On my Windows 11 PC, I get good performance and no crashes after tweaking it properly. In my opinion, The Sims 3 was the peak of the franchise, while Sims 4 is easily the weakest entry. Maybe that’s just because I personally prefer the realism, depth, and attention to detail in Sims 3 over the simplified and easier design of Sims 4, but if I had to choose one game to keep forever, I would keep Sims 3 without hesitation. Even after putting over 300 hours into the Steam version, I still feel like I’ve barely seen everything the game has to offer. That alone says a lot about how much content and personality this game has. I’m genuinely excited to keep playing and discovering things I haven’t experienced yet, even all these years later.
I used to LOVE the sims 4. I read about how TS3 was better. I decided to check it out myself. I was shocked with the open world. the ability to go to the stores and by things, minimal loading screens, adn create a style. I still though TS4 was better. That was until I bought Seasons and Generations. The game was improved by an incredible amount. I then found out about mods, then I downloaded cc worlds, mods, and the game was eons better than 4. The expansions are cheaper, add more, and feel more optional to add than required. Overall this game is so much better than its succesor.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Sims™ 3 is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam.
No, The Sims™ 3 is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 19.99€ on Steam.
Yes, The Sims™ 3 received 26,422 positive votes out of a total of 31,085 achieving a rating of 8.34.
😎
The Sims™ 3 was developed by The Sims Studio and Maxis and published by Electronic Arts.
Yes, The Sims™ 3 is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, The Sims™ 3 is not playable on MacOS.
No, The Sims™ 3 is not playable on Linux.
No, The Sims™ 3 is not playable on Steam Deck.
No, The Sims™ 3 is not playable on Steam Machine.
No, The Sims™ 3 does not support VR.
The Sims™ 3 is a single-player game.
Yes, there are 19 DLCs available for The Sims™ 3. Explore additional content available for The Sims™ 3 on Steam.
No, The Sims™ 3 does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, The Sims™ 3 does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, The Sims™ 3 is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for The Sims™ 3.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 27 September 2026 09:25 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 14 October 2026 09:13 UTC |
| Steam price | 26 October 2026 20:04 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 21 October 2026 18:06 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about The Sims™ 3, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about The Sims™ 3
- SteamCharts - Analysis of The Sims™ 3 concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck The Sims™ 3 compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
1,264
Developer
The Sims Studio,
Maxis
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Release
27 Jan 2011
Platforms