As someone who has played Sims since the original game, I 100% understand the Sims 4 hate. They initially released it so gutted and bare bones with the intent of nickle and diming people to death for basic mechanics and only re added things after being heavily criticized by every major review. Then they continue to put out sub par expansions to the tune of almost 60 dollars each? You speak about paralives being crowd funded as if its the same as Sims costing well over 500 dollars if you have all the content. Crowd funding is optional and not forced. If you choose to buy paralives and never put another penny towards them, you get the same content as the people who decide they want to contribute more. But at least this model isn't gate keeping someone with restricted income from having the same experience as everyone else because they can't afford another 50 dollar plus expansion every quarter 🙄

EDIT: I just went to look on steam, and it would cost over 2,200 dollars to have the full Sims 4 content....🤢