I am having the same issue however, in my case I had a small issue with my computer and had to do a soft reset on my computer and it uninstalled apps that I had installed on my computer so I had to re-install EA and sims 3 back onto my computer. I have been playing sims 3 off and on for years and never have had any issues. I can get a game started just fine and however, once a game is saved and I try to save again I get that error 16 and even get it while trying to save and quit. I have tried the whole save with a new name and the just quitting without saving. I then have to go into the saved games and delete the .bad file. However, this issue is that once I do that I can't get back in and keep playing later I end up getting that there is "A serous error has occurred while loading 'sunset valley.world'. It is strongly recommended that you restart the application." I now can't get into any of the worlds because I just get this pop-up. Not sure what is going on.