Please use this thread going forward: Save Game Corruption (Disappearing Lots/Error 800 or 801) | EA Forums - 5037272
@karoschmitz A patch a couple of months back eliminated the exclamation marks without eliminating the problem, so you can no longer use looking for exclamations as a way of checking whether you have the bug or not, sadly. I have been periodically loading into particular lots in Willow Creek and Newcrest that tend to break first for me, just to check whether the surrounding lots look like defaults or like the stuff I've placed. That's about the only way to check for this now, I'm afraid.
I am so angry about removing the visual information that something is wrong. Now we just don't know if something is broken and I have better things in life than checking every world in the game before saving. I don't even know how I would spot it now. I just stopped playing.
Amazing how they are ignoring this thread yet are aware about this issue to the point they remove visual signs of the issue and that's it. If you don't see the problem, there is no problem, right?
Because EA/Maxis is actively IGNORING this thread and the others around corrupted saves/lots/games, my advice to friends and family who also used to love The Sims is: STOP all purchases of ANY DLC! The game code appears to be collapsing under its own weight. Save what your can and back up those saves to another location/drive/storage etc. Yes there will be some tempting new offers as EA continues to milk this franchise to death. However, adding new content/packs/etc. appears to break the game badly especially if you already have a lot of other DLCs installed.
I believe the reason they aren't responding here or on social media or Reddit, etc. is because they KNOW it's the end of the line and don't want to admit it publicly till they squeeze the last dime out of us.
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/1cljuns/i_think_for_rent_broke_my_savefile/
The question is will there be a solution from EA? I have several save breaking bugs in my game now to the point where I can't help myself with workarounds. I even used Sims 4 Studio to clean up the save game but this led to other problems.
I would consider myself as tech-savvy and tried a lot to recover my save that I'm attached to since years. At this point there is nothing I can do and I guess many other Simmers face similar problems. It's really time for EA to find a solution for these ongoing save breaking bugs.
I've never been at a point where I can't play a game anymore due to so many problems.
Understandably enough I'm not able to purachse more content because I can't play the game due to all these problems.
Quick update on this...
This issue as reported by other simmers is not just related to 'For Rent'. Having residential rental properties exacerbates the issue but it is not the sole reason for why this bug happens. I've deleted all my residential rental properties and purchased all the latest packs and i was running the game okay for a long time. However this issue of houses disappearing, endless loading screens etc has re-appeared this week in my game since populating all the lots in Ravenwood from the new pack. As mentioned earlier in the thread, EA have removed the exclamation signs over the lots and thus made it worse by not even allowing us to identify the corrupted lots from world view! My summary is that the game doesn't like big legacy saves, or having lots of builds with lots of objects/clutter in 95% of your worlds.
My laptop is a pretty good spec (have upgraded RAM etc over the years) so i've got some heavy builds in my game from creaters like soulsistersims and don't have an issue with performance. However it doesn't matter, as the game definetly has some 'memory cap' on what it can process. The only way to fix this is by deleting builds in your worlds that aren't important to you and leaving the deleted lots as empty 'residential' with no households in it.
EA really are shameless...
