Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.96.397.1020 (I think)
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Realm of Magic, Vampires, Parenthood, Seasons, Strangerville, Jungle Adventure, Dine Out
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? I have no idea
What happens when the bug occurs? My game acts like I just purchased it: all settings are set to default, I have no cc installed and my saves are gone.
What do you expect to see? My saves and cc
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No
Ever since September 18th, 2022 my Sims 4 game has been wiped clean of any and all data and progress. I can't think of anything I could've done to make this happen. I've tried everything I could on my end to get it working again and nothing has helped. I tried contacting EA multiple times but they couldn't help either. The same thing has happened to my Sims 3 game, once again, out of nowhere with no warning or reason. I'm completely stumped.
@Angeline1398 I've merged your post with a guide for this issue. Please see the first post, in particular the "Restoring missing saves" and "My saves aren't in OneDrive" sections. The same principle applies for Sims 3 as well.
Hi there, I hope responding to your post is fine.
I logged into my game today after playing it the past two days to find that my family I have been playing is gone. My two other saves are still showing up, and one of them is showing as if I logged into it yesterday via OneDrive and my EA documents. I am so upset that this happened to my save file. I have lost so many hours of gameplay. I have not found the save in OneDrive or anywhere on my computer. Is there anything else I can do to try and find it? It's so frustrating this is something that is just able to happen! I haven't done anything differently then how I normally play. I did just get the most recent game update/patch. I wonder if that has something to do with my save file suddenly disappearing? I don't understand why it's not even showing up in OneDrive either if that apparently has been backing up files for a while.
@photochic20 It's possible that OneDrive had a syncing error, although that's difficult to prove and I don't know how common it is. Have you checked the recycle bin on onedrive.com? Sometimes there are older versions of existing saves there, renamed in a way that makes them impossible to use as-is, but the files themselves should be intact.
Other than that, if you've searched your computer and come up empty, there's nowhere else to look, unfortunately. I know it's not helpful now, but this is why it's so critical to create manual backups—never trust any service, or the integrity of your computer file system, for that matter, to do the work for you. I'd also suggest at least considering getting rid of OneDrive or stopping it from automatically syncing your files. Instructions for each are in the first post on page one.
I very much doubt the game update had anything to do with this by itself. But the EA App does overbudget for updates, and taking all that extra storage can trigger OneDrive to try to push data to the cloud on a computer that doesn't have a lot of free space to begin with. That's just speculation too but at least backed up by some anecdotal evidence.
I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you.
