EA's semi-regular Sims livestream series "Behind the Sims" aired its third episode last night, capping off the Summer 2023 content season and announcing what we can expect from the game for the remainder of the year — and it turns out they weren't joking when they said we were in for a surprise for The Sims 4's 9th anniversary. The newly-announced Home Chef Hustle DLC will be the first "stuff pack" for the game since January 2021, and many players had long since assumed that the pack type had been quietly retired in favour of the controversial micro-DLC "kits".
Stuff packs retail for £9/$10 each, which is roughly double what a kit costs. After lukewarm reception to earlier Sims 4 stuff packs, more recent releases such as Tiny Living, Nifty Knitting, and Paranormal Stuff had easily added more than twice the content of a kit. Hence why many assumed we wouldn't be seeing another one: they were starting to feel more like the mid-priced game packs (which go for £18/$20 each), yet still cost half as much, all while making kits look bad by comparison.
The reveal of The Sims 4 Home Chef Hustle Stuff wasn't the only surprising news to come out of this episode of Behind the Sims. The September-December 2023 season, titled "Hustle and Bustle", will also include a new full expansion pack (title and theme TBC) — most players were calling that we'd already had our fill this year, following the release of Growing Together in March and Horse Ranch in July.