After the June 30 2026 update, I can’t load into gameplay when I create a new Sim in CAS. I make the Sim (or household), click done, and it just gets stuck forever on the family photo/household preview screen. It never actually loads the world.
This only happens with brand new households created in CAS. If I add a household straight from the Gallery or through Manage Worlds, it loads fine.
I’ve already removed all mods and the entire Mods + Trays folders, repaired the game multiple times in the EA App, cleared the cache files, and even tried a full user files reset. Still no luck. No mods or CC at all right now.
Same exact thing is happening to me, I thought I was crazy.
I’ve tried absolutely everything: reinstalling my game, deleting my entire Sims 4 folder from Electronic Arts and restarting the game so it generates new files (it works one time after doing that; the first time you open the game the CAS will let you get through, but when you try to make a new sim the second, third, or fourth time, it will get stuck again on the family photo screen. It’s so bizarre).
I have 0 mods, 0 CC in; I don’t even have my old saves or tray files in, so there’s no way it’s anything of my old stuff that’s broken. I’ve seen a few other people say the same thing, I’m thinking it’s a bug or something with the new patch that’s broken. I’m almost scared to even play in my old save because I don’t know what else will break..
I think I managed to fix it - I saw some forums say it was their windows defender blocking the game. Try going into windows defender, and allowing the sims 4 folder (I used the path to my sims folder where I install mods, and the path where the actual launcher is saved) to bypass windows defender. That should hopefully fix it for you :) I haven’t tried making a new character, but everything loaded fine when I saved her & put her in the world through my gallery. Any fixes I needed to do, I just did through MCC.
