They announced the cancellation a few weeks ago and I still think it's hella funny that they cancelled The Sims 5 not super long after Paradox announced they were cancelling their The Sims competitor. It really feels like EA was only making a 5th Sims game to compete with a new contender, and when the contender gave up they said "oh well I guess we don't need a new sims game."
Releasing a new full price sandbox game instead of keeping supporting the old one (even if it's mostly in the form of DLCs) is not good for the gamers.