Game stuck on loading screen when update drops The sims 4

Hi @eemiliak 

Are you using mods/CC in your game currently? 

Yes, I am.

If the mods are the reason to the game getting stuck/crashing, how is anyone supposed to play safely with mods? There are new updates releasing almost every day now, and most that play The Sims 4 use mods.

I'm sure there is a way to fix this though since there is a clear correlation. Playing the game -> game getting stuck -> exit the game -> a new update has dropped. 

@eemiliak Playing with mods is always a choice, and part of that choice involves choosing to do extra work at game update time (see my advice post on that in How to Use Mods and CC ) to make sure outdated mods are removed and updated mods are replaced. It also means you go in knowing that you might have times you play a nonmodded save or take a Sims break or give up on a particular mod. This is true for every game that has mods; it's not special for Sims.

I've not seen stats on the proportion of Simmers who use mods, but we see Simmers elsewhere in AHQ all the time who are on console or choose to play with no mods or CC. It's certainly possible that mod-users are the minority or that most mod-users are using things like CC clothing that almost never become outdated because there's rarely reason for that code to change.

Re. update frequency, that's typically once a month for Sims 4, and usually that's scheduled with a pack release. Most changes in updates are made to enable new gameplay and features; if those didn't happen, we'd have no new content. Otherwise, the goal of updates is to fix bugs, and those bugs are encountered by console players - who have no bugfix mod way of fixing the few bugs that there are mods for. In times like this last couple of weeks when there have been multiple updates, they've been fixing game-breaking bugs that can affect both modded and unmodded saves.

Yes, I agree with you, however not much of the information you provided had anything to do with the bug itself.

I understand that using mods is a choice, and that there comes issues with it. I have been playing modded Sims games for nearly 13 years.

I obviously also understand that updates are needed. That doesn't mean that they can't cause harm to the players currently playing the game when that update releases. 

Quite frankly, we don't know if this bug is even happening because of mods. I don't see how the bug is swept under the rug simply because I do use them. I have never seen this happen before after 13 years of playing, so it leads me to think it either has something to do with the EA client or if it has always been a bug, just one I haven't encountered before.
As we established, it can also be because of some mod that I have. However this is a fairly unique bug that I, after having played with multiple sets of mods, have never seen before.

It also happened when I only had 4 very basic mods in my game that have never caused any harm. 

Also, both of these instances occured after the last two updates dropped. 

I understand that you're only trying to help, and I thank you for that. It's great that we have a community where help is available. But simply stating that mods could be the cause is not constructive in this instance, since if it is an actual bug for many players, it is quite a devastating one 🙂

Please don't think that I'm being rude because I certainly am not trying to be. I'm just matter of fact and solution-oriented lol. 

@eemiliak Stuck loading is a symptom, not a bug. It has many causes. The only way to know if it's being caused by something other than a mod is to test for that -- and it's a common outdated mod symptom. Nobody here is simply stating that mods could be the cause: we're helping you to find the cause of the problem for you. This is a first step in diagnosis, not an only step. If mods prove not to be the cause, then other possible causes can be looked at, and there's a pinned topic in Game Issues directing to several of them.

Everybody in AHQ knows that a broken save or entire broken game is serious problem. These are the kinds of bugs that get prioritized. Yes, that symptom might return as a result of another bug. Making sure it is a bug not mod-caused is part of the process of narrowing down the problem. We hope that players like you will take the time to be part of that process, especially when a case is hard to trigger because it took a very specific circumstance to happen. But first we really do have to make sure the game is the problem. So people get sent here, to Mod/CC Issues, to rule that out (or, most of the time, figure out that it was a mod and solve their problem).

Yes, you're very right.

The only way for me to know if this issue is mod-related is if I were to play the game without mods, and then make the game load at some point when an update has been dropped.

This instance would basically never happen for me since I never play without mods, ever.
That is partially why I started this topic, to see if others have noticed the same thing. It is hard to identify this ''symptom'' since I don't think many people would think of the fact that their game froze because of the update. Basically what I'm saying is that they might not notice that issue was followed by the game updating, hence my thoughts on it being niche.

Also, it is not a save that is broken btw, or at least not a singular one since this happened on two different save files with different types of mods installed. (The first is a build save where I only use utility mods, such as MCCC, and the other is a save with all of my mods (ca 70GB))

@eemiliak Here's a simple workflow to test if a mod is stopping Sims 4 from starting at all:

1. Drag the Mods folder the desktop
2. Delete the file called localthumbcache
3. Launch Sims 4

Here's the workflow for if you can launch Sims 4 but can't open a game from the landing page or Main Menu:

1. Drag the Mods folder the desktop
2. Delete the file called localthumbcache
3. Launch Sims 4
4. Select New
5. If that works, go back to the Main Menu and select Load > your regular save

In both cases, you still have all your mods and saves to return to, and if it turns out not to be a mod/CC, you've confirmed that and can head to the pinned topic in Game Issues .