The 24 hours before Inzoi's launch were full of anxious speculation. According to the frantic posts in its Discord and Reddit communities, Krafton's life sim was set to either crash and burn immediately or make everyone uninstall The Sims 4 in shame. Neither of those things have happened, but less than a day after its official launch time things are actually going…well? Slightly better than expected, even.
Inzoi has over 87,000 concurrent players on Steam right now according to SteamDB and that number looks like it's going to continue climbing. Its 2,700 user reviews, at least for the moment, are at 86% positive for a "very positive" rating. That's actually a lot better than I was expecting, in an era where financially successful games from major publishers can roll out the gate to immediate negativity on Steam.
I predicted months ago that Inzoi's launch day would be a social media bloodbath. It hasn't risen to quite that level of hair-pulling, though, despite all signs suggesting it totally could.
Earlier this week, the reveal that Inzoi would include Denuvo sparked outrage (clearly Krafton had lied about its plans for Inzoi to be moddable!). The announcement that it was removing Denuvo the next day swung in the opposite direction as fans took it as evidence that Krafton cares about each of us personally and will tuck us into bed after checking our closet for any filthy Sims defenders.
Launch day is here and Inzoi is in fact not a crash and burn disaster. It's pretty much exactly what I expected: a very beautiful character creator and build mode with a life simulation that feels a little empty right now. But it's not a bug-riddled mess or an embarrassment. It's fine, and has potential.
There are some reports of crashing, some known issues with certain GPUs, and a few weird simulation bugs and oversights. But the biggest complaint right now, including from me, is that it just needs a lot more stuff still—as is typical for an early access game.
Against all odds, the tone in Inzoi's online communities could nearly be called even-keeled. Sure, I can pop into Reddit and sort by new to find posts getting downvoted from players expressing mild disappointment. But the majority of interaction is happening over on a thread about the official The Sims account welcoming Inzoi to the life sim neighborhood, with players celebrating the possibility of healthy cohabitation for the two life sims.
The same goes for Inzoi's official Discord server. There's the occasional toxic defender eager to tell disappointed players to go run off and play Call of Duty or whatever, but largely the battle camps have been split between mild disappointment and those rushing in to remind people that early access games are in fact incomplete by nature.
I'd expected to walk into reality TV levels of infighting on Inzoi's launch day but somehow, like the game itself, things are actually pretty okay around here.
Correction: The headline of this story originally said Steam reviews were "mostly positive" while the article text listed "very positive." As of right now, user reviews are in fact "very positive" at 86% and the headline has been updated to match.
