2025 Challenge Tournament Overview

[mismck]

2025 Challenge Tournament Overview

Welcome to the 2025 Sims 4 Challenge Tournament! The 16-event tournament runs from February 2 to November 15. There will be two monthly events (except May, which will feature the Mid-Season Major, and  October/November, which hosts the Tournament Finale), with challenge #1 beginning on the first Sunday and ending the following Saturday. Challenge #2 begins on the second Sunday and ends on the second Saturday of play. Rules for each month's events will be posted the Sunday before the first event goes live to allow plenty of practice time and for questions to be answered. Here is a link to the official 2025 Challenge Tournament Schedule.

General Challenge Rules
The rules below apply to all 2025 Tournament events. Any exceptions will be noted in individual rulesets.

Creating Your Scoring Game File
Always create Sims from New File: no story mode, gallery, or library Sims. Missing community EA lots, such as the spa, must be placed in your fresh town at the beginning of your file. All game options need to be at default settings. Environment and pack settings are the player's choice. Tutorial & Tips: Disable Discovery Quests.

Gameplay default settings seem to vary from player to player. Simply confirm the following as these are what we assume when creating rulesets:
Autonomy: Full
Disable autonomy for selected Sim: this box should NOT be checked
Auto Age (Played Households): Yes
Auto Age (Unplayed Households): this box should be checked
Sim Lifespan: Normal
Animal Aging: this box should be checked
Show Wants & Fears: this box should be checked
Build Mode Items Grant Gameplay Effects: this box should be checked
Lifestyles: this box should be checked
Enable Neighborhood Stories: this box should be checked


Expansions and Game Packs
Any new Expansion or Game Pack content (less than 30 days before a Tournament challenge goes live) must be disabled before starting your scoring file. If there have been at least 30 days after an Expansion or Game Pack, you can use it (unless a specific ruleset says otherwise).

Practicing and Submitting Scores
The official starting and closing dates are at the bottom of the rulesets. Playing your scoring file before the starting date or after the closing date is not allowed, but practicing before a challenge officially goes live is fine. Once you create your scoring file, that’s it—you have one attempt and cannot create a 2nd scoring file. You must submit scores in the individual challenge thread before the closing date has come and gone in your local time zone. Scores submitted after the closing date will not be accepted. After you submit your score, remember not to comment on how you approached the event with specifics until the event is closed.

Banned Content
Cheats panel. Opening the cheats panel is never allowed except for the bb.moveobjects cheat, (ResetSim Firstname Lastname) for stuck Sims, and (showhiddenobjects) for preventing abductions with a satellite dish.   
Modifications (mods) are patches that alter some core component of gameplay and are never allowed.
Tricks to reset Whims, such as reloading a game or traveling/entering CAS.
Editing Non-Home Lots. Personal inventory items can be placed on a non-home lot, but this is the only allowed editing of non-home lots. 
Social Bunny app.
The All-In-One Gemology Table By Humphrey Inc. from the Crystal Creations pack.
Plasma packs exploit from purchased fish and selling the packs.
Inventory Exploits - removing and replacing inventory items to make Aspiration milestone progress.
Exiting without saving and/or restarting from an earlier save. If a bug plagues your challenge file, then PM the team with specifics.

The Honor System
The 2025 Tournament is about friendly competition and having fun. It attracts players of all abilities and competitiveness, from casual first-timers to seasoned high-caliber veterans. We all want to have a good time no matter what we’re seeking to get out of the Tournament, which means we all need to play honestly — no cheating or exploits. If you discover an exploit, you must PM the team (mismck, Elinoee, and LenaLJ) so we can quickly edit a ruleset. We have a zero-tolerance policy for cheating.


Prizes

Champion. The 2025 Tournament Champion will be the player at the top of the World Ranking at the close of the Tournament Finale on November 15 and will receive a 2025 Sims 4 Tournament Championship Plaque and a $50 gift card (player’s choice - Amazon, Steam, EA, etc.).
Runner-Up. One $25 gift card will be awarded to the runner-up.
Perfect 10 Winner. All players who received at least §10,000 in sponsorship over the 2025 season will be put into a pool for a random draw $10 gift card.


We hope the 2025 Sims 4 Challenge Tournament adds new and exciting dimensions to your playing, and most importantly, we hope everyone has a great time. See you on the leaderboard — mismck, Elinoee, and LenaLJ.

[Nelleam]

Hi, thanks for all the work you folks do setting up and running these challenges.

I just have a question about the default gameplay settings.  Is it possible to get a rundown of what they are?

I usually just click on the restore defaults button and then click the revert display settings option in the window that pops up.  However, when I did that to set up my first practice run for the current challenge, it set the lifespan to long.  I know that previously it would set it to normal.  I changed the setting to normal. and then repeated the process, and it changed to long again.

I don't know if this is a bug with my game, or if the default settings have changed since I last did one of these challenges.  For now I will change it to normal for my practice.  I don't imagine lifespan will have much impact on this particular challenge, but I would like to make sure I have everything set up properly just the same.

Thank you for your time.

[mismck]

Hi @Nelleam

I popped into mine and restored defaults and my lifespan stayed at normal. So weird that yours changed to long. I've updated the rules to clarify what we assume are everyone's defaults.

Have fun Simming!
Misty

[mismck]

We are sad to announce that we will not be continuing this year’s tournament due to a significant decrease in participation. We’ve had many years of fun and hope to continue seeing you around the Sims forums.

[Metropolis Man]

@mismck and @Elinoee -- thank you both from the bottom of my heart for giving it your best. I appreciate it.

[GlazeyLady]

It was a good long run . . . from 2009 with Sims 3 to now. But nothing lasts forever.

I'll never forget my first challenge 14 years ago - My Garden of Eatin' Smells Fishy in March of 2011. I felt pretty good when I turned in my score and was both disappointed and excited when I placed 45th out of 95 - disappointed because I thought I'd done better, but excited because there was so much sharing and opportunity to learn.