Expansion packs forThe Sims 4are more important than ever before. With the removal of Stuff Packs and Game Packs,The Sims 4relies 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 inThe Sims 4’s Legacy Challengesthat use long-term saves.The Sims 4: For Rentexacerbated 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.
Why The Sims 4’s Updates Break the Game
Withno plans to developThe Sims 5,The Sims 4’s expansion packs are more important than ever. Expansion packs add new items and gameplay, butThe Sims 4’s expansion packs are more specialized than previousThe Simsgames, and focus on one pack area, such asThe Sims 4: Cats and DogsandThe Sims 4: Horse Ranch, rather thanThe Sims 3: Pets, which included all these features.
The Sims 4was 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 ofThe 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:
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 noThe Sims 5on the way,The Sims 4needs 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 therelease ofTheSims 4: For Rent.The Sims 4: For Rentwas 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 Rentbroke the dam.
It’s been over 18 months since the corruption bug entered the mainstream, and there is still no solution to the problem, withThe Sims 4team 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 ofThe Sims 4’s bugs, but it is not alone. Every expansion pack release has introduced serious bugs toThe Sims 4, some of which either take months to fix or are never addressed at all. The update forThe Sims 4: Enchanted by Natureintroduced a pregnancy glitchthat 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 asThe Sims 4: Dine Out’s broken restaurant feature,The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories’broken weddings, andThe Sims 4: Enchanted by Nature’s unbalanced ailment system and chaotic gnomes.
