New Sims 4 update cuts back on excessive notifications—you can finally silence your phone, and the grim reaper will try to recruit you less

The Sims 4 is a noisy game, especially once you've piled on a few expansion packs. You're constantly fielding stray notifications and unsolicited calls from acquaintances asking you for advice, and before you know it you've soiled your pants and bowling night is ruined. Thankfully, the headlining note in a recent Sims 4 patch is a stab at "clearing the noise."

As the update blog notes, there are loads of new menu options for in-game alerts. You can silence your phone entirely, for instance, and toggle festival notifications for each individual pack.

Some nonsensical cases of unwelcome calls have been accounted for explicitly: freelancer sims will no longer receive calls regarding careers they aren't in, the grim reaper will only bother recruiting sims if they’re already tagged as macabre (see our guide on that if you think claiming the souls of the dead actually sounds pretty rad), and sims on your front lawn won't call you to ask about your childhood anymore.

There are a lot more notes like that, so I'd...