Community Concerns with Save File Issues

Heya MsMoBear​ 

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. To make sure I address your questions, I’ll do my best to address each of your points below:

Doesn’t adding DLC add more variables into the mix that you have to examine when you investigate issues? Is continuing to release DLC detrimental to the process of fixing problems?

Adding new content to any game adds more variables as you mentioned. We’re very familiar with these variables as a sandbox-style game, and have dedicated and continuous testing processes in place. While we do our best to catch a wide range of "golden path" type bugs, “golden path” being the bugs that are most likely to impact the largest subsection of players as they effect the most commonly used systems; part of what makes The Sims 4 so special is that every player creates their own unique experience and pathway.

We’re actively investing more time and resources into regression testing to ensure we catch bugs earlier in the development process. This allows us to implement fixes before those issues reach players in the first place.

Would a player be able to simply do a clean uninstall/reinstall of the game and playtest without adding mods/cc?

In a way, yes – however, some mods will leave behind files in The Sims 4 directory that aren’t removed by uninstalling the game. These files need to be deleted manually, or they may continue to interact with the game. Playing a save that previously had mods enabled carries some risk, as remnants of those mods can persist even after they’ve been uninstalled. This is especially true for “script mods”. 

You can find the steps for removing these files to test on a “vanilla” game here. 

Also, since the article mentioned there was a paid group of testers, would they be able to do testing without mods/cc or are they already doing so?

Our testers cannot test against mods or CC in The Sims 4, as those have always been an “at your own risk” scenario for players. We do however provide support for mod creators via the TDESC files which are shared on our Discord with every base game update that will modify how mods interact with The Sims 4. Sharing these files allows mod creators to quickly update existing mods to function on the latest base game update.