The Sims 4 Save File Corruption and For Rent Issues: Statement from EA
Table of Contents
Sul Sul Simmers,
We’ve received questions from players with concerns about the
For Rent Expansion Pack, and what we’ve been doing to tackle save file issues in
The Sims 4.
To address this community concern, we’re providing an update below on:
- For Rent issues we’re currently investigating
- Current issues with The Sims 4 that might impact saves
- How we prevent issues before release
- What to do if you’re experiencing serious issues with your game
Nothing is more important to us than the performance of our game and players’ enjoyment of it, and we’ve been investigating these issues thoroughly before providing an update. What we discovered is this is not a single bug, and given the complex variance in devices, setups, packs, and other factors, it’s required extended investigation. With this being shared, let’s dive in.
For Rent
We’ve fixed 29
For Rent issues that the community has reported, and as of August 26, we’re tracking
37 others across 2 different statuses.
- 26 Issues Currently Being Investigated: This means we’re aware of the community report and it’s going through our internal processes. This can become a lengthy process that ranges from trying to replicate the bug to identifying the cause, working on a fix, testing the fix, or scheduling an update for the fix to come. Our team will share updates as the work continues.
- 11 Issues Require More Info: This means we’re unable to make progress on this issue until we get more specific information from players who are experiencing it. Save files with the issue occurring is the most helpful for our teams, and you can learn more about how to report issues further down this post.
For Rent
Of these 37, we’re currently aware of 2 issues commonly associated with save corruption that players are experiencing:
- Lots/Houses disappear in saves featuring a large number of rental units, with 173 votes.
- We’ve identified a partial fix for this issue and will provide an update once we have more information about the scale of the fix. We won’t mark this as fully resolved until we’re confident we’ve fixed the issue as described by players in this post.
- White screen when loading the world, with 39 votes.
- We’re tracking this across PlayStation 4 and looking for more reports.
If this is not your experience with
For Rent, and you continue to face issues that specifically relate to this pack, we’d like to receive the info needed to investigate further. If you recognize an issue you’re facing, please drop a comment or a vote – it really helps us prioritize what to tackle next. If your
For Rent issue is not listed
here, please start a
new post here so we can investigate it.
The Sims 4
Let’s look at what issues are impacting save files on
The Sims 4 more broadly.
A most severe issue would be if
The Sims 4 game is completely unable to be opened and does not launch. We currently have zero confirmed reports of this; if any players are experiencing this, please leave a comment
here so we can help troubleshoot.
The next type of serious issue is when a player is able to load the game, but unable to load their save. From what we’ve found in our investigations so far, we’re currently aware of 6 issues that players correlate with save corruption, and this is where we’re investing our focus to resolve.
- The game loads up initially, but then the player is unable to make further progress. This could mean a player sees a white screen, or the game crashes, the player gets stuck in infinite loading, or receives an error message that prevents them from being able to play that particular save file.
- The game and save file loads, but the player reports that things are broken, which typically means builds/lots, items and/or Sims are missing.
It’s important to note that just because these issues are not unique to
For Rent, they may have connections to
For Rent that could be uncovered during investigation. You can expect us to share updates as we find them.
We’re committed to continue investigating these issues and work towards making progress, alongside shipping fixes for other top community concerns. We aim to deliver updates quickly, once we have new or helpful information, to keep players informed of our progress.
Keep reading to learn more about how our team works behind the scenes to identify and address player issues.
Investigating Game Issues
Before we release new content, we complete compliance tests across platforms and multiple levels of quality verification, including playtesting with The Sims team and a paid group of experienced Sims players from the community.
We’re unable to recreate every potential Sims scenario across the different combinations of packs, playstyles, and devices before launch. Once it’s been released, we utilize player feedback to understand what issues are being experienced, by how many people, and any patterns of what might be causing them to aid our resolution.
Another variable is if players use Mods and Custom Content (CC), as we’re unable to test against those in our pre-launch testing. Some mods come with permissions that modify save file structure, which can have unintended consequences out of our control. We have
best practices for mod players here, which include disabling mods before any update, and we do our best to let modders know when to expect a base game update via our roadmaps. We also share our TDESC (Tuning Description) files via Discord to help with their updates, as that provides essential information for understanding and modifying data like field names and options.
Reporting Game Issues
If you’re experiencing something that’s impacting your ability to play the game that’s not on these lists, we want to hear about it. If you’re unable to get your The Sims 4 game to load or have a save file that you cannot open anymore, we want to hear from you and review that save file. We’ve created
this new thread for any reports that the game is not functioning as expected, as we want to capture the full situation.
Fixing old issues and addressing new ones are both equally important to our team and to players. While many players continue to play without interruption, we understand experiencing these issues is frustrating, and we remain committed to making progress against them. Plus, we’ve seen players ask for information on how to back up save files and improve the overall game performance, which we’ll be sharing soon.
