Expansion packs for The Sims 4 are more important than ever before. With the removal of Stuff Packs and Game Packs, The Sims 4 relies on Expansion Packs, Kits, free updates, and events to offer Simmers new content in a game that likely isn't going anywhere for a long time.
Unfortunately, the game just wasn't designed to handle so much information, which becomes clear in The Sims 4's Legacy Challenges that use long-term saves. The Sims 4: For Rent exacerbated a save corruption glitch that destroys saves, which is especially dire for Simmers who have invested years into their Sims and hundreds of dollars in expansion packs.
The Sims 4's Pregnancy Glitch Explained
The Sims 4's latest patch introduced a game-breaking pregnancy glitch, but this is far from the first time Simmers have had to suffer through bugs.
Why The Sims 4's Updates Break the Game
With no plans to develop The Sims 5, The Sims 4's expansion packs are more important than ever. Expansion packs add new items and gameplay, but The Sims 4's expansion packs are more specialized than previous The Sims games, and focus on one pack area, such as The Sims 4: Cats and Dogs and The Sims 4: Horse Ranch, rather than The Sims 3: Pets, which included all these features.
The Sims 4 was originally intended to be a multiplayer game, and the neighborhood system is a legacy of that. It requires loading screens to travel beyond neighborhoods within the same world, and was introduced to reduce the effort for PCs and consoles to run it. However, the worlds and neighborhoods within them put stress on this system, which is exacerbated when players add more to their games, and leads to a very serious corruption bug that can destroy saves.
This doesn't tend to affect casual players, but Simmers who have long-lasting single saves and who play Legacy challenges bear the brunt of The Sims 4's save corruption glitch. Because Legacy saves tend to have many player-created Sims, alongside multiple houses across Worlds filled with clutter and landscaping items, there is too much information for the game to process, and their save becomes corrupted.
Save corruptions happen when players:
- Have only one save
- Have multiple households in one save
- Build on many lots in different Worlds
- Have more items populating the Worlds
- Have multiple households on lots from The Sims 4: For Rent
Legacy Challenge players can mitigate save corruption by deleting NPC households, limiting gameplay to only a couple of lots, and deleting superfluous Sims.
The Sims 4 Expansion Packs to Watch Out For
With no The Sims 5 on the way, The Sims 4 needs to be evergreen with no end of official support in sight, but the game struggles to accommodate so much extra content. This issue has always been around, but was made more urgent with the release of The Sims 4: For Rent. The Sims 4: For Rent was the ideal pack for those who wanted to experiment with Build Mode. Unfortunately for many who had never encountered the save corruption, The Sims 4: For Rent broke the dam.
It's been over 18 months since the corruption bug entered the mainstream, and there is still no solution to the problem, with The Sims 4 team announcing it was looking into the issue in February 2025, with no other mention of it as of July 2025.
The Sims 4's Other Longtime Glitches
The save corruption glitch is only the worst of The Sims 4's bugs, but it is not alone. Every expansion pack release has introduced serious bugs to The Sims 4, some of which either take months to fix or are never addressed at all. The update for The Sims 4: Enchanted by Nature introduced a pregnancy glitch that upended pregnancy at all stages.
The Sims 4: Seasons, released seven years ago, introduced a glitch that breaks gardening for many players, which hasn't been fixed yet. Other glitches are exclusive to the expansion packs, such as The Sims 4: Dine Out's broken restaurant feature, The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories' broken weddings, and The Sims 4: Enchanted by Nature's unbalanced ailment system and chaotic gnomes.
The Sims 4
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 70 /100 Critics Rec: 26%
- Released
- September 2, 2014
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Maxis
- Publisher(s)
- Electronic Arts
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Cross-Platform Play
- Xbox, PlayStation, and computer versions of Sims 4 are all separate games incompatible with each other
- Cross Save
- no
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Simulation
