I just found out you can become a car thief in The Sims 3 and somehow it led to love at first sight with the man who burgled my home

I’ve finally found out why there still aren’t cars in The Sims 4. It’s because we couldn’t be trusted with them back in The Sims 3. As the only game that I didn’t play while it was the flagship for the series, I’ve been slowly rediscovering The Sims 3 for the past couple years. One thing I’d have not clocked on my own, which has come to my attention while perusing 11-year-old lets play videos, is that The Sims 3 lets you swipe entire cars from other Sims and make money selling them.

It all comes down to kleptomania, a trait whose mere presence in any game makes it a must have. Why wouldn’t I want my sim to randomly filch from friends? In The Sims 3, the kleptomania trait gives you the ability to “swipe something” while visiting another house or out around town after dark.

There’s no shame in pilfering from the bathroom while attending a party, but if you’re really feeling bold you can shove an entire Sloppy Jalopy in your pocket. It’s not even hard. As long as there are no witnesses around—and there usually aren’t past 7 pm—your sim can stand near an unattended vehicle and the “swipe something” interaction will usually pick it up at the nearest rehomeable object.

Stolen items go into the household inventory that you can access from Build/Buy mode, meaning you can either plop down the new ride in your own driveway or just choose to sell it. I netted 870 simoleons for my first jalopy theft, which is about a whole week of work for my bottom of the ladder professional criminal.

You can get chucked in jail in the Sims 3 as well, be warned. Though I can’t quite tell if that was a result of me hijacking rides or simply being in the actual criminal career track. Either way, the officers gave back my entire inventory, even the toilet roll I’d stolen from someone’s home, after I served my afternoon of time. So I’ve only become more emboldened.

Now I’m determined to turn snagging cars into my full side-hustle. I’ve been sneaking around the neighborhood late at night looking for houses that don’t have their cars locked up in garages. I’ve loitered outside the 28 Hour Gym, an outing that netted me two different cars. My second score, the Yoshomoto Evasion, sells for a cool 1,401 simoleons. That’s a big paycheck for a single night.

Turnabout’s fair play though, because on the way home from my nighttime excursion at the gym a thief broke into my house and swiped my entire toilet. I rushed home, hoping to burst in on the thief and either tell him off or demand some damn solidarity. Apparently I’m not allowed to interact with a robbing in progress, but we did manage to find some unexpected common ground.

When I barged in on him attempting to steal another appliance from my kitchen I got hit with the “attractive company” moodlet meaning my sim and the thief share an attraction for one another and a popup saying that he’d like to get to know me better. That’s the stupid sandbox stuff I live for, so I guess I’m going to give him a call in the morning. But I stole two cars tonight and he stole a toilet, so I know who’s the provider in this relationship.

So it turns out that crime really pays in The Sims 3, and sometimes you can even get a date out of it.

There is a kleptomaniac trait in The Sims 4 as well, I should note. It’s fun in its own way for sure, but my brief experience attempting to become a thief in The Sims 3 just reminds me how the earlier parts of the series were such silly sandbox simulations.