Since The Sims franchise has been about living one's fantasy life since its very conception, there isn't really any judgment towards players who like to use cheats. In fact, over the years, cheats have become a pretty essential part of the game itself, an iconic feature without which the franchise just wouldn't be what it is today.
Moreover, not all cheats are used just to get more money or free mansions. Cheats have become a necessity in more recent installments in order to facilitate storytelling and to build better, more immersive lots with all the possible tools at hand. Let's take a trip down memory lane and check some of the most iconic cheat codes that have ever existed in the franchise.
10 Free Real Estate
Getting the nicest houses was always a struggle in the first two games. Players would need to use money cheats at first by moving their family on an empty lot and then moving again in order to cover the costs for a brand new home.
This changed, however, with the introduction of the freerealestate on/off cheat in The Sims 3. The cheat could be used during the moving phase, which would essentially make every lot and house free. It was also implemented in The Sims 4, and has definitely made the lives of many Simmers a thousand times easier.
9 CAS Full Edit Mode
Editing Sims after they had been created was a near impossibility in The Sims, aside from buying new clothes. However, in The Sims 2, mirrors would allow a certain form of editing, and some special reward items would also let players control genetics.
Nowadays, with the introduction of cas.fulleditmode, players can fully edit any Sim in the world in the CAS screen at any time. That also includes personality and aspirations, as well as genetics. No more ugly townies, or weird clothing combinations!
8 Joke Please
It's pretty evident that the development team for the franchise has always had an excellent sense of humor. One of the great examples of this is found in The Sims 3, which introduced a cheat that many may have never even heard of, but which deserves to be named as an iconic addition.
By typing in JokePlease, players could request a random joke into command bar. As one would expect, many of them were more of the dry, sarcastic kind than actually excellent pieces of comedy.
7 Kaching
Money cheats have always been the bread and butter of the game, and kaching in particular has been around for quite some time as a cheat. In fact, it was introduced way back in The Sims 2, which made money cheats so much easier to use compared to The Sims.
Kaching is different from another famous money cheat in the sense that it only gives 1000 simoleons to the household at a time. However, it also allowed players to control the amount of added simoleons a bit better without getting rid of bulk money cheats entirely.
6 Nessie
Nessie is a rare easter egg that has only appeared in two different games in the franchise. It first appeared in The Sims, which also featured a special cheat to make it appear in the neighborhood scene. Players simply had to type in Nessie into the command bar while in neighborhood view.
Nessie's also made an appearance in The Sims 4: Get To Work. She can be spotted in the waters of Windenburg, though the developers claim that her name is actually Emily instead of Nessie.
5 Buydebug
With bigger worlds came more objects, and that was pretty much the legacy of The Sims 3, along with its laggy expansions. Buydebug on/off would allow players to toggle on or off the visibility of various debug items included in the game.
In The Sims 4, the cheat is known as bb.showhiddenobjects, which includes a ton of items that developers used to "dress" and decorate the world. For builders in particular, these two cheats were a huge help as it granted them access to more objects that would help make buildings look more natural and blend into the world.
4 Testing Cheats
In the first game of the series, players didn't actually have to turn on cheats separately. It was only in The Sims 2 that the classic testingcheats command finally appeared for the first time. Who could forget this iconic line: boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true/false.
Later games like The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 changed this formula to be much simpler and easier to type in: testingcheats on/off. Not only does this allow players to put in more commands, but it also opens access to Sim and mailbox cheats that are all classics to the game.
3 Move Objects
One cheat that's been consistently the same is the move objects cheat. This one is so iconic it's impossible for most Simmers not to know about it. First introduced in The Sims, it allowed players to place items wherever they wanted, regardless or walls or other objects.
This cheat has continued to remain roughly the same, with the current version being bb.moveobjects in The Sims 4. It's just another one of those cheats that builders will always silently thank the developers for, due to how much it has allowed players to accomplish.
2 Klapaucius And Rosebud
Before kaching and the famous motherlode, there was something even more ancient and iconic: klapaucius. This was later deleted from the original game after a patch, but initially, by typing "klapaucius" followed by a bunch of "!;!;!;" repeating itself over and over again, players could quickly increase their household funds.
With Livin' Large, rosebud was introduced as well, which when typed in alone would work similarly to kaching, which came to replace it in The Sims 2.
1 Motherlode
Finally, the mother of all money cheats: motherlode. This beast of a cheat would instantly drop 50 000 simoleons into a family's household funds and turn them from poor to rich in a blink of an eye. It was power beyond belief, suddenly dropped into the hands of Simmers.
Motherlode was first introduced alongside with kaching in The Sims 2. Since then, it has remained untouched as a cheat. With how iconic it is, it's unlikely it will ever disappear from the franchise.