Landlords are so drunk with power they’ve started advertising apartments made in The Sims 4 on real estate websites

Apartment hunting in 2024 is, to be frank, a barbaric experience. Scour through crusty ultra-compressed photos taken in panorama, make a two-hour trip for a 20-minute viewing with 50 other people and then pray to whatever god is out there that you emerge victorious from the gruelling application process that follows.

I went through it all this year, and trying to find an apartment that looked like its listing pictures was by far the hardest part. I dissected far too many images to see how much creative liberty the real estate agents were taking, but I can safely say that none of them were ever cheeky enough to supplement real pics with a vague recreation in The Sims 4.

The Spanish rental market must be doing things a bit differently, as one particular listing on Idealista started doing the rounds after a Twitter user—who said her husband spotted the ad while apartment hunting—pointed out that it was using screenshots from the life sim. Well, I say screenshots, but it’s a case of the classic “take a photo of the monitor with your phone” that I love so much. The slightly fuzzy snaps are all from a bird’s-eye view, containing all the classic all-white apartment furniture: sofa, television, fridge, random bedside table next to said fridge. They’ve even gone the extra mile and added some pizazz with a couple of books on the coffee table along with utensils and a kitchen roll on the counter.