Photos turn Black (Patch 1.120.140/2.26)

Hi all,

We wanted to provide an update here as we know this issue has been frustrating, and these pictures represent important moments in your Sims’ lives that matter to you. Before we go into more detail below on the nature of black photo issues, we do have a fix confirmed for the issue reported in this thread that will be released with our next Base Game update in early February.

What causes black pictures?

Black pictures are a symptom of different issues, not one single bug. Most of the black picture issues you’ve seen recently trace back to changes made around The Sims 4: Businesses and Hobbies. Before Businesses and Hobbies, the game saved all custom images (i.e. tattoos, custom CAS paints, photos) - both ones still in use and images you had used before, but have now replaced - directly in your save file. This kept pictures safe, but it also caused save files to grow very large.

In Businesses and Hobbies, we introduced optimizations to reduce save size by removing custom images that are no longer in use. While this helped performance and storage, it also introduced new edge cases. In some situations, images that were still being used were mistakenly removed. When that happens, the game no longer has the data needed to display the picture, resulting in a black image.

Why does this bug keep reappearing? 

There are many ways that different systems use custom images in The Sims 4. This means a fix to resolve black photos for a specific scenario won’t resolve the issue elsewhere in-game. Even when symptoms look the same, the underlying causes can be different.

Can already broken pictures be restored?

It depends on the type of issue.

• If the image data was permanently deleted there is no way for us to restore it. Once that data is gone, it’s unrecoverable.
  
  
• If the image still exists but isn’t displaying correctly (what we call a “blank picture” issue), those can sometimes be recovered through fixes. 

This difference is why some fixes apply retroactively to older saves, while others only prevent the issue from recurring in the future.

We know pictures are deeply personal to how many of you play, and we’re continuing to treat this as a priority area. Thank you for your patience, your saves, and your detailed reports, as they directly help us track down these issues and improve the game.