Marcel Winatschek

Six Thousand a Month, No Corners, No Risk

Filip just wanted to mess around with his kitchen in The Sims 4. At some point, for reasons that probably made perfect sense at the time, he started adding drugs instead—cocaine, MDMA, marijuana, the full catalog. Dealers, junkies, parties that spiral, prostitutes, and the kind of hangover that makes your sim sit on the bathroom floor reconsidering every decision. He packaged it as a downloadable mod called Basemental Drugs and put it online for free.

He makes around $6,000 a month off it. Voluntary donations from grateful players who, apparently, feel compelled to tip the man who gave them the ability to simulate a three-day bender inside a dollhouse.

There’s something perfect about this. Decades of moral panic have warned us that video games teach kids to commit crimes, and here’s Filip running the most successful drug operation in simulation history without touching a single illegal substance. The lesson, as usual, is not the one anyone intended: learn to code.