I was originally saved to a USB drive but when troubleshooting moved the files to my desktop(still wouldn't work). I'm running on macOS Sonoma Version 14.0
I have always saved my sims games directly to my USB drive during the setup process and never had any issues. Yesterday, I completely uninstalled the game from both my computer and external drive and reinstalled and am still getting the same error code.
@PurpleCats9
The game cannot, and never has, loaded user data from any other location other than User > Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4. This is hardcoded into the game and there is no way in the game to change this. User data is defined as the contents of the Sims 4 folder such as saves, Mods etc. The only way around this is to create a symlink. The game still thinks it is saving to the user's Documents folder but the OS is pushing all the data to the linked location. Or you can do some jiggery pokery on your Mac and have the ~/Documents folder stored externally but this is highly inadvisable.
You can install the game anywhere you choose. This a completely separate and independent process to the user data storage and is dictated by your settings in the Origin app.
The error you are getting is because you have not allowed the necessary permissions for the game to read/write to the Sims 4 folder.
I know that I have all the permissions allowed as this has happened before and every time I go through all the steps, it usually fixes. However, it still will not allow me to open it this time because "Sims 4 is already running". Even with the new EA app download and getting rid of Origin I still cannot open my the game. I've said previously that before this the game was running and working fine, I just logged in one day and it wouldn't open. I'm not sure what to do at this point. I've asked help for help from EA but that's a joke because they can't answer my questions and just close my tickets and send me back here to the forums.
