Worlds Gone, Game Treated As If No Saves Present

Okay, so here we go. I've been playing this game since 2014. I have this save that I was building in before starting a super sim playthrough. I've had several characters made, along with most of Oasis Springs done. I went to open the game, and my protagonist and his family isn't there. "Weird," I say. So I try loading up my game anyway. It tells me to pick a season, like I was fresh out of CAS, so I pick spring. Then it tells me to pick a world. But guess what? There were none.

So I shut off for an hour or two, frustrated. Then, for whatever reason, it decides to work. But my save still wouldn't load. I try loading it, and it's just not there. I see a couple of others have had this issue, but have posted it on Reddit instead. I've tried all solutions there to no avail. Move my game folder elsewhere, do a clean reinstall, all of it. Nothing. So I just back up my save, and uninstall What point is there having a game taking up space on my drive if I can't even play it?

And for the record, I may have done something EA hates with my copy so I could play it offline, but it was A: Completely reversible by launching through the app, and B: the issue was happening with the EA one as well. I don't want to see any argument on that on here. Just offer solutions for when I retry later.