The black photos issues just cost me hours today

All I wanted was to move my oldest house. I build it back in 2016 and it evolved with every expansion game and stuff pack over the years. I had to rebuild the entire living room because of some wall issue one time. Other than that its fine. Been fine since this is my third save game where I placed it because the first two got corrupted. Including the first save I curated for nearly seven years!

But saving it to the gallery and just placing it didnt work today. I always got a "system error" that popped up for two seconds and the move lot menu in the middle of the lot. Why? I have no idea. There was no error file, no notification, nothing that indicated what the problem was.

I removed everything at the edges of the lot, saved the lot repeatedly, removed my entire mods folder and it was still marked as modded, switched from my modded game to my unmodded game for events, removed the second basement because the game forgot to add a floor. Nothing worked.

Then I suspected its because of pictures my sims took because of course those are CC. Because tree. I had this issue before. So I searched the entire house and removed all of them. They were pitch black. Every single one. Several years old and black. I had to search each room several times until I found the last one so the lot would be CC free. A button to somehow highlight CC would be great at this point or an option to save the lot without CC.

And now I could place it again. Because the issue were black pictures, nothing else. Which the game didnt tell me. I had to connect the dots myself based on long term experience.

Usually I have a heavily modded games. Tons of mods that make the game look better, feel more fun, new options, new interactions, a lot of custom build mode items (which I mostly dont use because of cases like this but gather anyway just incase I want to use it)... And in the end it wasnt a mod issue at all. I cant stress this frustrating fact enough.

This is how bugs affect us players and I dont have the impression EA/Maxis/devs care anymore considering instead of bug fixing we get ingame currency nobody asked for, unfair cuts for makers despite being told its supposedly fair (30% isnt fair), less transparency about the future of the game like expansion packs nor updates on the corruption issues anymore.

It looks like the only people who care about the game are the players who want to play it. But we often cant because of issues like this. We want to enjoy the game. The game refuses to function. Our brain holds both truths at once, and the tension becomes something that possibly needs therapy. Its anticipatory stress rooted in the possibility of losing something we care about.

Games are supposed to be predictable rule‑based environments, so when they fail at that, the emotional backlash is stronger than in normal software. And in my over 28 years of gaming experience I can confidently say sims 4 is the most sensitive game which can hinder and destroy our efforts easily with no chance to get lost content back from the company. This is why I create backups on a regular basis. Because sending my save to them doesnt mean it gets fixed and sent back. Never even heard of such a case.

Btw, this is the 1mil simoleons house I thought I lost.

The effort is real. The sense of accomplishment is real. Sharing and learning another players enjoys it feels real. The lack of support from the company is real. And Im afraid this is something the EA/Maxis/developers cant understand anymore.