Re: The Sims 4 Steam has no Steam Overlay and disabling Origin In-Game issue.

@puzzlezaddict No greyed out here. I can toggle on and off like normal. But tried unchecked and checked, both don't seem to able to bring the overlay still.

@azfar90my  Thanks for looking.  Just in case it's really that simple, please try playing in a clean user folder.  Move your entire Sims 4 folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, and the game will create a new folder the next time you open it.  Don't add anything to this folder yet; just see whether the overlay works.

If it doesn't, please let me know what antivirus you use.

@azfar90my  Someone else reported the same issues you have a few hours ago, so I'd like to compare your information with theirs.  Please let me know specifically which antivirus you use, even if it's never been an issue and all the settings should allow everything through.  Please also run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

@azfar90my  Your dxdiag lists a number of errors relate to EasyTune, which you may or may not be actively using, and a couple errors that reference a component of the Nvidia graphics driver.  So normally I'd suggest you start there.  However, the other person with this issue figured out what was causing it for them:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Steam-stopped-counting-hours-of-game-playing-status-and-Steam-in/m-p/10130425#M209720

Even if that doesn't exactly apply to you, please try restarting your computer and launching Sims 4 from its desktop shortcut, or from TS4_x64.exe in the game's program files, without opening Origin or Steam first.  If you have them set to open with Windows, please change the settings temporarily to test.

@azfar90my  Thanks for trying, and I'm sorry it didn't help.  I thought I'd already suggested a clean boot, but apparently not.  It's possible you have some other conflicting software that neither of us has thought to address:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-boot-windows-10

When you reboot, please shut down everything nonessential in the Task Manager, just to be thorough.  And please also disconnect any peripheral devices you don't use while playing as well.  Even though it's unlikely one would affect the Steam overlay only for Sims 4, it's possible: each game uses a slightly different configuration of resources.

Otherwise, I'm still hoping someone else will have an idea, but until then, maybe just check back whenever Origin or Steam updates?  It's possible whatever element isn't playing nice with your system will be updated or replaced at some point in the future.

This is a known problem. Does anyone from developers even read steam forums? The overlay doesn't always work. I reported this to EA support, they refused to help. No one at EA cares and they just blame the user.

The problem:

Steam overlay doesn't work. Which means you can't take screenshots, open overlay to use the chat and your playtime isn't tracked. Actually the last one is funny because you can buy the game, play it for 50 hours and refund because steam will show you've played 0,1 hours.

And please stop blaming your customers. I've played hundreds of games on steam, i also have inquisition, andromeda, titanfall 2, unravel from EA. Overlay works fine. This is the problems with sims 4 only and it's not an isolated issue, a lot of people are having it.

Solution:

Always close origin before launching the game. Close every origin process. Launch the game, see if overlay works. If not, quit the game or just alt+f4, close everything origin related and launch again. Repeat until overlay starts working. sometime it works from the first time sometime it takes 3-5 times. But overlay never works if you have origin open before launching the game.

When this all started:

I bought sims 4 last year, i think summer or early fall. It worked fine. All this started somewhere towards the end of february or early march.

Please fix this. I believe this is extremely simple to fix for developers. We just need to find out the reason. but if all you do is blame the customers we will never get a fix.

@Kushlewskis  No one is blaming the customers.  However, when a feature works for most people and doesn't for only a few, the issue clearly has something to do with the affected players' systems.  That doesn't mean it's only about their systems, of course, but figuring out what can fix it for these people can point to the underlying cause.

I have no idea whether the Sims 4 developers read the Steam forums.  I do know this particular issue has been escalated.

@Kushlewskis  Yeah, I got that part, it was earlier in the thread.  The point is that whatever the reason the process isn't working, it's only not working on a few players' systems, for whatever reason.  Or maybe reasons: another person was having the issue only in a very specific circumstance:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Steam-stopped-counting-hours-of-game-playing-status-and-Steam-in/m-p/10130425#M209720

Ok actually this problem is happening not only with sims 4. Inquisition does the same thing sometimes. Probably other EA games too. There's clearly an issue with origin and steam interaction.

I am also having the same problem, it was working perfectly in the first 13 hours of play, after that steam overlay stopped working.

So any news? Anything? Will EA just ignore this?

@Kushlewskis  As I mentioned before, this sounds like a system issue, at least in large part, and therefore isn't EA's problem to solve.

Ah yeah denying is the best way to avoid fixing it. So my system is intelligent and it decided to hate EA games right? And even if it is, people at EA should help people to solve it. And please don't tell me to contact support. It's useless, all they've told me was to reinstall everything which i've done. One of my friends refunded the game after playing it for some time because of that, other people just go through the same hassle as me.

How come this is a "hot" topic here? It doesn't happen just to me or couple of people, it's a mass problem with EA games. the funniest thing is that people can play the games and refund them and EA can't do anything because steam doesn't track the hours played. I know that EA cares about money more than anything so maybe this would makes them fix it. I'm sure people are already abusing this bug to get free games.