[ARCHIVED] Disappearing Sims aka Culling

I got this reply from EA today, on the ticket I submitted about this problem:

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Customer Experience.

I am sorry to know that your issue has not been resolved. Please do not worry, we are here to assist you. To fix this issue, please reset your Sim by following the below steps:

Please press together CTRL-SHIFT-C. A grey text input field appears at the top of the screen.

The use resetSim {FirstName} {LastName} - Resets the Sim.

This action will resolve your issue. For more information, please follow the below article:

http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-4/Sims-4-my-sims-are-disappearing/m-p/3508811#M11627

Can someone explain to me how this is supposed to help?

I just checked when sims disappear, and it happens exactly at 3 AM every night. It happens mainly to autospawned sims with no house.

Same here. Every night around 2am my townie friends vanish. 

Can't keep a boyfriend without moving him in ASAP, or keep any friendships that aren't within my playable group. 

This is not okay ☹️ 

Heya,

I experienced this today with one of the main families families I play.  I just noticed it now and I probably played them a week or so ago.  They are not homeless and the age range was from baby-adult.  There were other children/teenagers from the same family that I had moved into other houses and they all disappeared too except one.  He was the eldest child in the family that disappeared, but was a young adult at the time of the disappearance.  Any solutions would be amazing.

Thanks!

@JensWul Standard response. Ignore

@Islaizzle Is your game patched ? Do you play on- or offline ?

I play online and I'm pretty sure it's patched.  Is there a way I can confirm this?

There's a file gameversion.txt in doc. Check what version it has.

New reply from EA, after describing the problem in detail:

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Customer Experience.

I appreciate you for clarifying the issue. I understand that your Sims are disappearing from the Sims 4 game. I am sorry for the confusion. Actually, this issue generally comes due to corrupt save files. Please follow the below steps and see if it helps:

Please go to your Documents -> Electronic Arts and rename the Sims 4 folder to The Sims 4 Old and test the game.

If the issue is resolved after playing the game 24-48 hours then please move old Sims 4 folder files to Sims 4 folder.

I am sure the above steps will resolve your issue. I am looking forward for your positive approach.

What do you think? Worth a try? I'm not so eager to start messing with my save files.

No. This way you'll loose your save game and of course you won't have the issue at first but it'll come back once you reach the max number of Sims in the new game.

Do you have the issue we are all seeing where the homeless disapper ? If so, there's nothing you can do but to move them into houses.

I have checked every sim day at around 5am in the unplayed sims.  My conclusion: The game has stopped making unplayed sims.  The only sims there are the housed sims.  What I am saying is that there are no sims to disappear.  If I go to the park or somewhere the game generates townies but when I check they are not shown in unplayed sims and they disapear from my friends list the second I leave that lot.  I am on generation 8 of a legacy challenge so I have been playing this save for almost a month for several hours a day.  If I want a new spouse for a generation I have to pick them from the gallery and house them so they don't disappear.  If I put gallery sims into "not in world" they disappear the next day.