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Dragon_Pierce's avatar
Dragon_Pierce
2 years ago
Solved

prevent Sims 4 from downloading further DLCs

My problem is that I tried out all the Sims 4 DLCs that I own in the EA App, but I did not like some of them (Baatuu, Wedding Stories), so I wanted to remove them.

Of course EA App (as well as Origin before that) does not allow the deinstallation of single DLCs, only the complete game.

I could use startup commands to simply deactivate the DLCs I do not want to play with, but they would sitll take up space on my (not too spacious) SSD. Space that I could very well use for other things.

So I uninstalled the whole game and did a clean install, choosing only my favorite DLCs. Wanted to start a new game, but was then informed that there was still a download in progress. Without me allowing it EA App really had started downloading all other DLCs. It was not configured that way, I had made sure of that before.

So I had to remove Sims 4 again, as it had already completed installing Baatuu which I really did not want.

I don't want to have DLCs forced on me, I want do decide myself which ones I want to install and play.

Is there any way to prevent this from happening again?

Maybe some workaround without disabling Internet access? (I suspect Sims 4 would not even run if I disabled Internet access)

pc
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    2 years ago

    @Dragon_Pierce  Disabling internet access would do it, provided the game launched at all, which works some but not all of the time.

    I have a suggestion that is absolutely not officially supported but that won't do any harm; at worst, you'd need to uninstall and reinstall Sims 4.  When you've reinstalled the game but haven't launched it yet, close the EA App and kill the EABackgroundService in the Task Manager.  Go into the game's program files, likely here:

    C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 4

    For each pack you don't want to install, create a text file with the same name as the folder for that pack, for example Batuu is GP09 and My Wedding Stories is GP11.  The full list is here:

    https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/extras-2/available-packs-dlc/

    When the text files are created, strip the .txt extension off of them so their names are just GP09 , GP11 , etc.  The EA App won't be able to create a folder with the same name in the same location, and it won't be able to install the pack data into a text file.

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  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @Dragon_Pierce  Disabling internet access would do it, provided the game launched at all, which works some but not all of the time.

    I have a suggestion that is absolutely not officially supported but that won't do any harm; at worst, you'd need to uninstall and reinstall Sims 4.  When you've reinstalled the game but haven't launched it yet, close the EA App and kill the EABackgroundService in the Task Manager.  Go into the game's program files, likely here:

    C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 4

    For each pack you don't want to install, create a text file with the same name as the folder for that pack, for example Batuu is GP09 and My Wedding Stories is GP11.  The full list is here:

    https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/extras-2/available-packs-dlc/

    When the text files are created, strip the .txt extension off of them so their names are just GP09 , GP11 , etc.  The EA App won't be able to create a folder with the same name in the same location, and it won't be able to install the pack data into a text file.

  • Dragon_Pierce's avatar
    Dragon_Pierce
    2 years ago

    Thank you for your answer.

    That is an interesting suggestion that might just work.

    I will try it out on one of the next days when I have time.

  • Dragon_Pierce's avatar
    Dragon_Pierce
    2 years ago

    @puzzlezaddict 

    I am afraid this solution does not seem to stick with the game.

    I got the code for the Horse Ranch pack today and wanted to redeem it. EA App told me it had to update first. OK, did that. Then redeemed the key, checked it it was shown in the list of available DLCs. Ordered the app to update base game and start downloading Horse Ranch. Saw here that many users seem to have problems with Horse Ranch, so I wanted to abort the download. Only then did I see that all these file names intended to prevent the download of all DLCs had apparently been deleted and some unwanted DLCs installed again. :-( 

    I'll try it again, it had worked before until the update.

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 years ago

    @Dragon_Pierce  Thanks for the update, and that's unfortunate.  I don't have another suggestion to prevent the App from downloading packs, so hopefully this was a glitch and not the new normal.

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