There are certain things that we have learned are major red flags over the last few years. One is major game releases that set a review embargo at such a late time that you can’t cancel your pre-orders. The other is major game releases that don’t even issue review copies of a game to game reviewers and journalists.

For the second time this year, it looks like a major EA release won’t have review copies. Back in March, EA didn’t issue review copies of Titanfall on PC and only allowed Xbox One reviews at a closed event hosted by EA and Respawn. Now, EA is not going to release review copies of the upcoming Maxis title The Sims 4.

The news about The Sims 4 came to light after IGN Reviews Editor Dan Stapleton posted the following on Twitter:

What’s most interesting about this is probably the worst thing that EA could do for Maxis right about now. Last year’s release of Sim City was an absolute disaster, though that was more a result of the poor server setup than the game (though I wasn’t particularly impressed by the dumbing down of Sim City 2013). Shrouding the game behind a veil of secrecy so there won’t be reviews at launch sounds much worse. It’s not helped by the fact that a number of features in The Sims 3 won’t be in The Sims 4 at launch (unfortunately, most likely to be released later as DLC).

And while this raises a major concern about The Sims 4, the sad thing is that it may not make a bit of difference. The Sims franchise has always been geared toward the casual gamer. These are the types of people who don’t regularly check game blogs, news sites or reviews. For the vast majority of Sims fans, this news will go by unnoticed unless they accidentally stumble across it on a Sims fan-site or forum.

The lesson to be learned from this story is that we should hold off on buying The Sims 4 until people we can trust get their hands on it. So hold off for about a week to see what the real deal with The Sims 4 is.