Crime Simulator

Crime Simulator released on Steam on June 17, 2025, a $14.99 heist-and-burglary game from developer CookieDev and publishers Ultimate Games S.A. and PlayWay S.A. Rather than following a story campaign, the game hands players an ever-increasing debt and a set of nightly quotas, sending them into one of three districts to case houses and businesses, steal what they can, and survive until the night's time limit expires. Its 2,612-review English pool sits at a Very Positive 82%, describing a game clearly built as a spiritual successor to the developer's earlier Thief Simulator series, with a large and enthusiastic base of players — many explicitly returning fans of those earlier titles.

The core appeal, according to the pool's most detailed reviews, is how satisfying it feels to master a location over repeated visits. One reviewer who logged 65 hours to fully complete the game wrote that "the locations are genuinely satisfying to play, and once you learn their layouts, NPC routes, security systems, and possible loot, you can start finding your own ways to clear them more efficiently," adding that "even after completing a location, I could see myself coming back to it simply because it is fun to rob once you understand how everything works." Another reviewer described the same appeal from a slightly different angle, noting the quota-and-debt structure kept them constantly working toward a goal: "constant feeling of working toward some goal or another," even after 50 hours of play.

Multiplayer draws consistent, specific praise as the format where the game is at its best. One reviewer wrote plainly, "in multiplayer, it's going to be much better," while another said, "I already enjoyed Thief Simulator and now Crime Simulator lets me play it co-op," specifically highlighting the progression from "normal to pro to master" difficulty tiers as a fun structure to work through with friends. A reviewer who convinced a partner to join in called the experience "anxiety inducing" in the best sense, describing hours of tense, funny co-op heists together.

That said, the multiplayer experience is also where the pool's most consistent technical complaints land. One reviewer described being unable to "barely step foot out of the truck in multiplayer without the game crashing or another player is super lag," while a separate reviewer with 42 hours logged wrote they "had to join lobbies 10x just to play a game and then get disconnected again." A third reviewer specifically flagged broken lobby invite codes, writing that after leaving a session to retrieve the invite code, "the lobby no longer exist." That three independent reviewers converged on connection and lobby stability as a specific, recurring pain point makes it a fair, sourced weakness rather than an isolated bad session.

Detection and combat balance is the pool's second major, well-corroborated criticism. One reviewer complained of being "constantly caught on the sidewalks or middle road by security guards and neighbors doing nothing," while describing police as able to "1-tap gun u down with a ridiculous redzone" once spotted. A separate reviewer made a near-identical complaint independently, writing that players "get detected from 6km" and that "police are quite fast when they start chasing you and then they shoot you and kill you in one hit." A third reviewer described a bizarre specific bug, saying they were caught by a security camera positioned in what should have been its own blind spot. Beyond detection, reviewers also independently reported world bugs: NPCs clipping through walls, unreliable fence-vaulting, and in one case, loot failing to respawn properly after a strong opening run, which the reviewer said cost their group "50 hours" of content they'd hoped to play through.

A smaller but pointed thread of complaints concerns the game's post-launch monetization. One reviewer objected that "the DLC is not apart of the game purchased," feeling it should have been bundled in, while another described a jarring mid-development balance change: after building up a hideout expansion in an outdoor garage area, a patch retroactively required paying "$15,000 to get back out there," despite that cost not existing when they originally built it. That reviewer, notably, still recommended the game overall, framing the change as an unwelcome surprise rather than a dealbreaker. It's a fair detail for prospective buyers to know going in, especially anyone planning a long-term co-op save with friends.

It's worth situating Crime Simulator honestly against its most obvious point of comparison: several reviewers described it as, in one reviewer's words, "essentially a reskin" of the developer's earlier Thief Simulator games, sharing much of the same visual language and even specific asset details like money roll models. That reviewer still recommended it, arguing the added quota structure and multiplayer support were enough to justify a fresh purchase, and most of the pool agreed, but it's a fair originality caveat for anyone who has already burned out on the developer's prior work rather than coming to this fresh.

Taken as a whole, Crime Simulator is a satisfying evolution of its developer's established burglary-sim formula, offering real replayability through its location-mastery loop and a genuinely strong co-op experience for groups willing to play through some rough edges together. The detection balance can feel unreasonably punishing, multiplayer stability issues are real and corroborated across multiple independent reviewers, and the post-launch monetization changes are worth knowing about before committing to a long save. For fans of the genre, especially those planning to play with friends, it's a solid, if imperfect, recommendation.