Sim families disappearing, become empty households

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What is your current game version number? 1.59.73.1020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Discover University, Island Living, Get Famous, Seasons, Cats and Dogs, City Living, Get Together, Get to Work; Realm of Magic, Strangerville, Jungle Adventure, Parenthood, Vampires, Dine Out, Spa Day, Outdoor Retreat; My First Pet, Laundry day, Toddler Stuff, Bowling Night, Vintage Glamour, Backyard Stuff, Kids room, Movie hangout, Spooky, Perfect patio, Luxury party
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? I don't know, the bug occurs randomly when exiting a playable household and switching to another. Sometimes it occurs, sometimes it does not. It's usually the family I just played that disappears.
What happens when the bug occurs? A family disappears. The family is present in Manage Households but is empty and when you edit them in CAS they are gone. They cannot be recovered even by loading previous saves where they are FOR SURE present.
What do you expect to see? My families stay intact and I have no fear of moving between them.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. Discover University, Realm of Magic, and My first pet stuff (bundle purchase)

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I have had 3 families disappear now, all from San Myshuno. The family can still be seen in the households screen and the game recognizes them as being moved into their apartment, but the family portrait is blank. When you go to edit in CAS, the family is gone and replaced with a randomized sim like when you start CAS from scratch. When you pick a building, you can see they are still living in the apartment, but when you hover over, the image is of a different family. When you play the household, no one is there. I've tried reverting to saves where I am SURE the family is still present, I played them, moved to a different family for 5min to edit somebody there, then went back to the first family and they're missing. I reverted to a save from 45 minutes ago and they stil don't exist. They are completely gone from my game now. My total sim count isn't even close to the limit so this can't be the game culling sims. This is the worst and is making my game unplayable by deleting families I've invested hours and generations into.

crinrict
6 years ago
Does sounds some mod issue.

Make sure that all the mods you use have been updated to work with the current patch level.

Custom content can get outdated with patches. If it works when you remove your mods folder, then one or more mods/cc is no longer compatible with the game and you have to find those.

Use the 50/50 method: http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Finding_Problem_Custom_Content

14 Replies

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StarryMight
6 years ago
@llamadollhouse: You said you had mods. There's unfortunately a fatal issue where if you load a save with certain outdated mods, it culls Sims, and if you save the game afterwards, they're gone for good. (If you DON'T save after discovering the issue, you still have a chance to save the affected Sims by updating and/or getting rid of the outdated mods before you load it again.)

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/MOD-RELATED-Sims-disappeared-from-household-Blue-flashing-square/m-p/8428174#M155726

Do you have any backups at all you can roll back to if you have them?
llamadollhouse
6 years ago
@StarryMight I do have a backup, but I switch between families a lot and update the kids, the adults' jobs etc., so I've made too much progress since the last one and don't want to lose it since that's for like 5 other families. I do have mods, but I always download their updates for the latest patch. This only started happening after I got University. I also don't load the save. I just switched between houses within the same play, and when I wanted to switch back after 5min they were gone.
crinrict
Hero+
6 years ago
@llamadollhouse Do you have the blue flashing square on them like shown on that picture StarryMight linked ?
llamadollhouse
6 years ago
@crinrict Nope. My issue is similar but not exactly this. It affects families I have JUST played. And not always. Similarities I've been able to observe so far are: they live in San Myshuno and the family becomes blank when I switch to a different household. I don't get error codes. I just randomly see that the family photo in the gallery or house map pop up is empty. (See my photo in the OP)
crinrict
Hero+
6 years ago
@llamadollhouse That is also a symptom of the blue square issue.

Do they keep disappearing if you remove all your mods/cc from your game ?

Do you have any backups from before it started ? If so, I would load that, remove all mods and test if it happens again. Create another copy of it so you can go back.
llamadollhouse
6 years ago
@crinrict I've removed everything for now and am observing if it will happen in the next few days. It's really random, the last time it happened was a week or two before this time so I won't be able to tell right away.

But I've started backing up my saves before exiting the game so it's always updated. I can't go back on this time because my recent backup prior to this was too far back and too much had already happened to several other families and I don't want to go through that much again.
crinrict
Hero+
6 years ago
@llamadollhouse Going to move this to tech for now for further troubleshooting.

Let me know what you find.
Zimsplayer1994
6 years ago
I’m having this problem, too, after purchasing and downloading University pack. And most families that get deleted are from San Myshuno and Newcrest. Otherwise I had mods that dated back to 2014 and they weren’t a problem on three separate laptops until University of this year (2020). I downloaded some mods on 12/30/19 and 1/10/2020 and have restarted my game multiple time with those mods removed but once I touch that one allegedly corrupted family, 3 families in San Myshuno vanishes. I’ve used Tray to see if all the families that were going missing shared something in common and I found out it may have been a shoe. I removed that, game was doing okay for a few saves, until I hit certain families that are causing others to be deleted. At this point I’m almost positive University just isn’t working with some mods but I can’t determine which and it’s frustrating as Sims isn’t that playable to find them all. I also noticed most of the families that are being deleted have pets and they’re families in Newcrest and San Myshuno—mostly.
crinrict
Hero+
6 years ago
Does sounds some mod issue.

Make sure that all the mods you use have been updated to work with the current patch level.

Custom content can get outdated with patches. If it works when you remove your mods folder, then one or more mods/cc is no longer compatible with the game and you have to find those.

Use the 50/50 method: http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Finding_Problem_Custom_Content
Zimsplayer1994
6 years ago
I reached out because I wanted to avoid the 50/50 method but alas, it was the only way to find the outdated mods. I'm happy to say that after 10 days of misery, Sims is playable and I'm no longer losing families. Outdated mods have been tracked, detected, and updated and I'm back on the road! Thank you so much!