Re: SimCity Complete Crashing on a Mac

Hi @loeffelmusic,

Can you try our Reset Origin tool? If usually solves problems that occur after a game or Origin update. I hope this helps. If not, please feel free to reach out to me again.

Hi, 

My simcity keeps crashing. I don't know if its to do with OS X 10.11?? is this an issue? At present I'm re downloading the game to see if this helps. Any ideas??

Hi @AlexGordon1989,

If your game keeps crashing, please take a look at our crashing and freezing troubleshooting article. If that does not resolve your issue, you can also use the Reset Origin tool. A third option would be to do a clean boot to see if any background programs might be causing problems.

In any case, make sure you have the latest updates for your Mac. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

--Tom

I have a similar issue. Since updating to El Capitan on my Mac, Simcity refuses to run for more than 10-15 minutes. Multiple error/crash reports sent by my Mac. I have uninstalled / reinstalled, performed clean boots, and cleared caches. Game worked just fine prior to updating to El Capitan. 

This has not helped either. Still crashes when entering a city. 

@aaronmurchy @loeffelmusic @AlexGordon1989

Sorry for not being able to get back to you sooner. I merged both threads as you are all experiencing the same issue.

Can you confirming again that you are all running the latest El Capitan update? It sometimes happens that we need to update things on our end as well after a Mac update, I will keel an

I do have some more steps that we can try meanwhile:

• Right-click Simcity in Origin, click Repair Game
• Right-click Simcity, select Game Properties and turn off Origin in-game
• You can also try to run the game in Windowed mode by adding -w in the same menu, I would advise to try these steps seperately
• Please go to Origin > Application settings and turn on Beta opt-in by scrolling down. Restart Origin afterwards

Please let me know if you have further questions,

I am getting the same problem and have a crash report that is normally sent to apple.  Maybe it can help you resolve the problem as it indicates a graphics kernel error.

Hi, i am having the same problem. It happened first after updating my Mac OSX to OSX Sierra. From then on i got the "Graphics kernel error: 0xfffffffd" when entering my city in Multiplayer modus and the game shut down. Kept doing that.

(Meanwhile -accidentally- i ordered a SSD to replace my HDD and i have installed it now).

I choose a clean boot with OSX El Capitan from my bootable-usb: thinking this would maybe be a solution after reading al the same problems in this topic.

(I had no problem playing SimCity when running OSX El Captain)

But... it still gives me the "Graphics kernel error: 0xfffffffd".

I run a

Mac Book Pro

OSX El Capitan 10.11.4

2,3 Ghz i7

4GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB

Can Origin or EA help me out? 

I am crashing on High Sierra beta. Did you ever resolve this?

Me too.  Crashes once a city gets too complex.

Hi This has started happening to me too, 5 - 10 mins in the game it either completely freezes or crashes... hopefully they will fix this soon I love playing this.

Yes - and pretty serious crashes too since my whole machine freezes (i7 iMac) and only option is to switch off an on again.

annoying either going to have to do a complete computer hard reset or find a new way ... any ideas ????

Hi all,

It looks like more users are having this problem.

I did not solve this in the meantime. Unfortunately..

SimCity already crashes while loading the city.

However, there was a small time in between posting the problem and answering you guys that i wás able to play.

I don't know what made the difference, apart from the settings of the resolution: you can see in the screenshot that i changed the format of the window game.

This helped for a while, but not anymore..

But: i do not need a hard reset. I installed "clean my mac" and it detects apps that are frozen. That way i can "force quit" anything without resetting. 

Maybe that will help someone to figure out what is crashing (to be able to take a look "inside" the game because the computer still works properly).

Keep me posted please!

I'm having the issue of the game crashing really quickly too. I updated to MacOS High sierra and ever since that simcity hasn't worked right at all. Even lowered the graphics on it to see if that would help. Uninstalled, reinstalled, repaired, checked for updates, But nope, before I get a chance to place the main road down the game just closes. I think there needs to be an update to the game to work better with high sierra or something. Because it was working great before. I really hope that it will be looked into, I really enjoyed playing the game before the issue started.  

Hey there

I did all those things too, even went on to apple help they sent me back to EA

Now because EA don't care about this game anymore, and I bet they won't even bother to email us saying they are aware of it, I think we are going to have to look around for other ways to get the game working again, apparently its something to do with graphics and 32 bit / 64 bit.....

Anyways I haven't confirmed that but if apple are selling it on their app store it must work??? but as I purchased this a few years back Im not risking spending another 25 quid on a game that doesn't work.....

Any further in depth updates from anyone else to get this problem sorted and getting us guys back into the game ??

I'm no longer having any problems.  I didn't do anything, but some update seems to have fixed it - could be a Mac OS update or a Sim update.

I purchased it on the mac app store the other week and got a refund, really not worth it, Very unlike apple to still be selling something that doesnt work with new Mac OS? So perhaps something at EA's end?

Thanks! It works!

It works?? Please tell me how you made it work! 

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@mariaponce765wrote:
I'm chatting with a EA Game Specialist Team member.
I told him that there's a forum full of people with the same problem and that the problem is probably from the game and not from the computer.
He said that they are going to work on it and make a new upgrade.
Let's hope it works!
You are welcome sim addicteds! ;-p

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Well, it's a little disheartening they didn't know it's supposed to be in the pipeline already. This post was made back in December, and we still don't have any updates. You could try the suggestions from there:

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@EA_Mage wrote:

Hello all,

We have escalated the issue to the studio and Maxis is investigating it.

At this time it appears as though the problem is related to use of the Intel GPU in your Macintosh. Maxis is working with Apple to further identify the root cause and determine the best resolution. We do not yet have a timeframe for a permanent solution.

While the investigation is proceeding you may be able to work around the problem by:

• Connect an external monitor before launching SimCity or the Origin client. The Intel GPU is typically used with the built-in display, but a second GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, etc) may be used if an external display is attached to your Macintosh.
• Consider using a utility such as gfxCardStatus ( https://gfx.io/ ) to force your Macintosh to use a non Intel GPU. (Note that EA & Maxis do not support third party applications and encourage caution when using applications downloaded from unknown sources on the Internet.)

Thank you very much for patience and understanding.

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Hello Tom.  Thanks for the advice.  I tried all four bullets and unfortunately none of them worked.  SimCity complete crashes within minutes of launching.  Completely up to date mac here running 8mb of ram.