I have been playing this game for 4 years now. I got a new computer around the beginning of June and everything went fine. I did run into trouble where on one account the sims 4 wouldn't launch entirely and spent hours trying to fix that and was given the answer that ea doesn't know how to fix my issue but would get back to me soon. But I could play on my other windows account so I did that. Unfortunately I was not able to move my save files for some reason that is still unknown so there goes hours of stuff down the drain. Now my saves keep mysteriously being moved and have disappeared altogether even on this other account. The game runs fine but my saves are gone. I am extremely disappointed in the sims 4 and at this point it's no longer worth it to play because I keep running into crap like this. I've spent countless hours trying to fix it but I honestly have no interest in playing a game that has many bugs and doesn't work properly. If anyone can help me fix this problem I'd love to hear your suggestions but I've gone to numerous forums on this site, tried everything they said and still haven't been able to play my game without losing my saves. I think for the money being charged to own the fullest version of this game it shouldn't have this many issues.

@bridgerex26 I've moved your post to the Sims 4 PC tech section. Is it possible that OneDrive is automatically syncing Documents with cloud storage, and removing the contents of Documents in the process? Your saves are stored in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves; other user data is stored in this Sims 4 folder as well. The game won't be able to see the folder in OneDrive though, and if it can't find the folder, it creates a new one with no content. Please check OneDrive for a Sims 4 folder (likely inside an Electronic Arts folder), and if you find one, you can move or copy it to your desktop for safekeeping. Then disable OneDrive's auto syncing of Documents, put your saves back in the proper saves folder, and you should be able to play them again. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choose-which-onedrive-folders-to-sync-to-your-computer-98b8b011-8b94-419b-aa95-a14ff2415e85?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us If this isn't the issue, please let me know; there are other possible causes of disappearing saves as well. And there are also ways to move the older saves to your new user account, if you'd still like to play them. But the first thing to do is keep your existing saves from disappearing.

I recently posted to a thread that was closed because it was first created in 2014. So I'm creating a new thread because I still have problems and questions.https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/Sims-4-Deleted-Saved-Game/m-p/9307591/highlight/true#M183587 I lost all my save files and yes there is a fix to keep it from deleting future save files but that doesn't bring back the hours of my life I've spent on the saves that were deleted. The game is not supposed to do this and is not advertised to do this so why is it still a problem 6 years later? You guys knew about this the same month the game was initially released. So my question is why is it not fixed? Why are you guys pushing out new content that people have to pay hundreds for if the game still has this big of an issue? Why is this not fixed in the patches? Why are you still ignoring this problem? When can people expect this to be fixed?

@bridgerex26 I've merged your new post with your other thread. The game doesn't generally delete saves, although there may be an occasional problem with migrating save data from the standard version of Sims 4 to the Legacy Edition. Much more likely though is a system issue, as described above.

Ok, so my onedrive is not synced, I made sure that wouldn't do anything before downloading the game. I don't have the legacy edition so that can't be it. And I've fixed the deletion issue, EA knows the sims 4 deletes saves because on that other thread people had that exact issue and EA could stop the future files from being deleted but not recover the old ones. I can play the game fine now, but someone who works for EA should fix this because this is a reoccurring problem from 6 YEARS ago. @puzzlezaddict I know you don't work for EA so I don't know if you can help from here, but thanks for your concern.

I'm having trouble getting my old saves back, they're not in my one drive, I'm missing like 4 households and 3 lots

My SIms 4 save files keep disappearing

12 Replies

puzzlezaddict
Hero+
6 years ago
@bridgerex26 There's no way that Sims 4 would delete your saves stored in other locations. I can see how it might manage to delete saves stored in Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves, and it does have permission to write to the Electronic Arts folder, but there's no reason the game would even be able to find all the duplicates not in the Documents directory.

Do you have a cleaner app or something similar installed on your PC? Many of these apps will, among other things, scan for duplicate files and remove all but one copy. This can be manual or automatic, so you might not even know it happened until you went to look for your backups.

For what it's worth, posting in this particular forum isn't likely to get the attention of anyone working on Sims 4. This forum is mostly players helping players, with the occasional EA community manager popping in, but they're forum organizers, not Maxis developers. While major issues do get forwarded, most threads never get seen.

If you do want the devs to take notice, then to be honest, you'll need more than just "my saves keep disappearing and I've ruled out the usual issues." I don't know what's happening on your particular computer, of course, but like I mentioned before, most people with this issue find it's caused by OneDrive or their systems moving files around, clearly nothing done by the game itself. True, many posters never come back, but other than the issues copying files to the Legacy Edition folder, I don't think there are any recent examples where it's been demonstrated that the game itself is outright deleting files. So people are going to assume that's not happening until proven otherwise.
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
6 years ago
@Simslovergirl114 Did you try loading a backup save, to see whether the households are there? Households do seem to disappear from saves sometimes, and lots can disappear too, for reasons that are not always clear. But loading a backup save often helps. And if you don't want to lose a lot of progress, you can try saving the affected households to the library and placing them in the most recent version of the save, that is, if the households are present in an earlier version of the same save.

Forum Discussion

My SIms 4 save files keep disappearing

12 Replies

About The Sims 4 Technical Issues - PC

Community Highlights

[READ FIRST] Important Threads and Known Issues

DirectX 11 (DX11) for The Sims 4 - A Step-by-Step Guide

DirectX 11 Technical Issues and Feedback Thread

Recent Discussions

Sims 4 crashing before getting to menu?

Sims 4 saying my license invailed

Game won't load past a blank white screen

[EBN] Game Crashes when exiting CAS when infants in household.

Crashing/Blue Screen Error