After waking up to the first Sims 3 update from EA in 10 years, all fans can think about is the potential for more: "So it begins"

It's official - after a whopping decade, EA has just released a brand-new patch for The Sims 3 - and while it's the first to drop in years tidying the game up for modern PCs, the community is hopeful there are more updates to come.

The Sims 3 has long stood the test of time now as one of the series' greats, but one problem in particular has plagued its stellar reputation as the creative pinnacle of EA's life sim gems - the game's inability to run properly on newer PC builds. And by newer PC builds, I'm talking about any computers coming from the last seven or eight years. The Sims 3, perhaps most infamously, offers no 64-bit support, but things could finally be looking up.

Just today, the EA App version of The Sims 3 received a minor patch. It doesn't do much, but it does address a long-standing issue that prevents players running on builds with more recent Intel processors from playing. The Alder Lake problem, as it's known, stops fans from getting into the game - now, thanks to the patch, users with higher-end Intel CPUs can play. While the update itself is minor, its effect on the community certainly isn't.

Longtime Simmers, myself included, are understandably excited by the potential now that an update has dropped after an entire decade of silence. Could a 64-bit version be in the works? Could better optimization for The Sims 3's stunning open world be underway? As beloved content creator and modder SimMattically writes himself in an online post on the patch, "so it begins" - or, more realistically, so we all hope that it does.

There's no telling what EA has in store just yet, or if there's anything more coming at all. It's surprising that the developers didn't release any official patch notes alongside the new build, which bumps the game to version 1.69.47.024017. While it might boil down to the update simply being too "minor" to warrant any notes, the ever-hopeful fan within me is choosing to look forward to what may never come - other changes and fixes.

Hopping back into the game after a decade? Here are the best Sims 3 cheats for a solid start.