I was able to find a temporary solution to get your saved game back if it just randomly disappeared from the game. This worked for me but I just decided in the end to start over my game.. Hope this helps! Thanks @stewielover1992
Credits go to @stewielover1992 for this post:
"1. Back up your"saved" file to your desktop just in case. You'll find it at C:\Users\[Your name]\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Saves 2. Now in your saved file you'll have different versions for slot_00000001 and slot_00000002. Slot_00000001 is for autosave, so you don't change anything. Your latest saved game game should be Slot_00000002.save.ver0, so in order to play it you delete the ".ver0" part to make it a saved game. 3. Boot the game, and you should see two saved files. Click on the one that doesn't say (auto).
It probably won't be your very latest saved game, but that's all that is available."
... As for a fix. This problem needs to be fixed ASAP. I haven't had it happen to me again but you never know when all your hard work will be gone with this problem.
And I thought I was going crazy, this happened to me. I have a girl and guy sim who was almost ready to propose and then today I went to play it and it was completely gone, so I had to start a whole new game. This issue better not happen again or I will not play the game until the issue is fixed.
I'm hoping a guru will answer this to, especially since we have almost 3 pages filled in 2 days. Has anyone had any confirmation on when a new patch/hot fix will come out?
I'm hoping a guru will answer this to, especially since we have almost 3 pages filled in 2 days. Has anyone had any confirmation on when a new patch/hot fix will come out?
I don't believe there is any confirmation yet for when a new patch will come out. I just hope saved games issue gets fixed in it
Yeah, just happened to me, as well. Based on the advice given above, I went into the folder and looked at my save game files, found the one that wasn't exactly the same size as the others, renamed it with a slot # that wasn't used yet and deleted the .ver extension, restarted the game, and voila, it worked.
In case any Gurus DO happen to look at this thread, the events that led up to this were: I played the game a while, then saved and exited to eat dinner. Returned to game, and hit the big "play" arrow instead of the little "load" icon at the top. The wrong game loaded, NOT the one I had most recently played and saved. I returned to the main menu without saving, went to hit the "load" icon, and accidentally hit the "new game" icon instead (grrr) and wound up in CAS, which I of course exited. THEN I hit "load game." It showed two saved games: The auto save (slot 1), and one other (slot 3,) NEITHER of which turned out to be the game I had been playing less than an hour before when I loaded them.
When I looked at the files in the saves folder, there was a veritable cornucopia of files, with assorted ver.#'s. I sorted them by Date Modified, and noticed that all of them that had today's date and a timestamp of just a minute or so ago were the exact same size, except ONE, which was larger. I renamed that one to use slot 2 - the game I was playing had more households in it, so it made sense it would be bigger. So yeah, that worked.
But aside from the fact that it --for reasons unknown -- chose to put a game I hadn't played since early yesterday into the autosave slot 1 spot, and turn the one I was playing and saved last into a .ver.# backup file, why in the world is it creating so many of these backup save files, each of which is a megabyte or larger?! There were ("were" because I deleted them) 12 of them, going all the way up to ver.4. I mean, it's good to have automatic backups, I guess, but that's kind of excessive considering I only had 2 used game slots...
I guess that for anyone who is having this problem, you could theoretically go into that folder and if you can't figure out which file MIGHT be the game you're actually looking for, you could rename all those .ver.# files and use slot numbers that haven't been used yet and load them up to see which one is the right one. I'd definitely back up that folder first though, in case you make a mistake.
had a game i have been play for 3 days, huge amount of progression and tones of saving, and now my file has completely gone, cant load it in game, only getting the big play button like when first starting the game, im extremely frustrated. Whats the point in playing the game if it doesnt save properly?
I had this same problem, but I found a solution. I did not have to do anything with my cache files, or anything else but my saves.
If you only had one saved game going, or only one save for that game, I am sorry to say you will not be able to get it back as it is corrupt.
IF you have more than one save for each game you played you CAN get your game back!
When I started up TS4 after it crashed my game had this orange notification telling me: "The save game you are attempting to load was saved with a newer version of The Sims 4 than is currently installed. Please update in order to safely load this save game."
After checking the forums and seeing someone had deleted their save file and a few other things, that it made that notification stop showing up on start up, I decided to do some testing to find out what was the actual cause.
My solution was to move all of my save files from C:\Users\*Your User Profile*\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves
to somewhere safe (for me this was a new folder I created on my desktop) and move them back in one grouping at a time and started up TS4 each time to see if the floppy disk was back. Every other save file grouping that was NOT the corrupt save was able to be loaded and played just fine.
Now what I mean by grouping is:
"Slot_00000002.save
Slot_00000002.save.ver0
Slot_00000002.save.ver1
Slot_00000002.save.ver2
Slot_00000002.save.ver3
Slot_00000002.save.ver4"
NOTE: Save Slot 1 in my experience has always been the auto-save.
Same thing has happened to me. My saved games aren't showing up. I have no mods. I just installed the game this weekend. I have maybe about 8 hours of effort with a really cute house that I made, but unfortunately didn't upload on the gallery. All gone. I'm now taken straight to CAS. Pretty unforgivable.
The update and repair option for the game isn't automatic, either. You apparently have to go to Origin and off click on the Sims 4 icon. Really obscure, EA. My boyfriend found this out late last night when he was trying to help me. No updates or repair appeared to happen when he clicked on the option. But if updates are not automatic for this game... that's also unforgivable. Jeez.
@Sim1P3 I seriously thought I was alone in this. Like I was the only person whose save literally disappeared knowing for a fact that I did in fact save. This has happened twice since launch. This happened for the second time yesterday when instead of saving to when my male sim was in a full relationship with someone and around a level 3 as a comedian he was back to being a level 1 comedian with his relationship much lower and my female sim back at the desert where she was during an auto save. I hate others going through this but it somewhat helps knowing im not alone nor crazy!
this happened to me as well,when I was creating a new sim to my town to make it more personalized, wanted to put it in a world and then I found out that none of my new moved in sims ( which were turn into non played just to do some nice background to my family ) are not there even more, my family (played one) is not there as well, they were in the previous stage of playing- living separately, not married not having new born and so on. Pretty much some about 20 hours of playing lost ? That's really frustrating I agree with all you guys.
So what I do because I wasn't searching the forum back then, I was so 🐸🐸🐸🐸 off, and tired of working on this family, so I just moved them into into house where they used to live before this save problem, and make it all speed up- fast married fast kid no memories no screenshots no having fun with game, just back where I was. I had to go through this ridiculous step putting random sim from library in the empty lot, motherlode like crazy move in to a house where my family lived before, then moving from one family to another tool or something like that. Because I couldn't find a way to move into a house a one sim from a whole family/roommates. My sims before they got married they were living in a different houses with couple of roommates, dorm kinda thing.
Oh gosh hope someone will understand me. Anyhow after that incident I kept saving like crazy to both autosave and "Hope will work" yup that's the name of my save. The problem doesn't repeat since then, but doesn't makes this all ok, or less scary that this actually can repeat when you'll be having a whole long family line, of course if you don't give up sooner on this game because all this difficulties. Maybe it didn't occurred again because I turned offline in game, less freezing and kicking out of game after that. Something is truly wrong with online gaming The Sims 4. You wanna see the content of other creators, it'll kick you out from game in no time. Oh and also, after every major change in my family members number I save then in library and just in case the whole game will blow up my computer and all TS4 folders I uploadthem to gallery. How come only base game could cause so many problems, and what about those who would want all the expansion packs for it which will be released someday? that would be interesting
It feels like players do all testing instead of creators crue... Very sad, such a great game
Thought I'd post here too. I have the same problem, I thought I forgot to save, but it's happened twice now. I save the game, log out, or turn off my computer, open up the Sims and it's like I never saved. Completely rolled back to before I started having this problem. Meh, I waited so long for this game to be released, and it's just one huge heartache, and for how expensive the game is, I'd of expected them at least have their game working exceptionally.
> @Ozzie1985 said: . This issue better not happen again or I will not play the game until the issue is fixed.
Forget "if it happens again" I'm not playing it until it is fixed. If this isn't fixed by them soon I'm bound to raise a one person riot on the forums. I paid $70 bucks for the "Digital Deluxe" Edition and I can't even play the game without it going stupid and deleting a weeks worth of progress?
Can't believe there's 3 pages of this problem and we still haven't gotten any reply or even acknowledgement, especially at the high cost of this game.
This is happening to me also. Just thought I'd add myself here to show how many people it's happening to.
For me, my boyfriend saved his own game earlier on today. As I've gone to load mine it had completely disappeared and isn't even in the EA>Sims4>Saves folder.
Hope they can fix this problem, as now I'm scared to get into a new game for it to only be lost again?
Are you "saving as" or just saving? If you are just "saving" it will overwrite whatever was played before. If you "save as" and create a name for your game you shouldn't lose it unless you are not paying attention to which name you're saving under. (which I did and lost a game) Try saving each game twice; under 2 different names. That way if you lose one you won't lose everything.
This is becoming utterly unacceptable. The day got the game, I played for hours. On the following day everthing was bloody gone. After that incident I started to carefully save game frequently so that it wouldn't happen again. Well so far so good but today something weird happened. The saved game was there but it was an old save. It wasn't at the point I'd saved for the last time. It was a save from way back. It's really nerve-racking! Has anyone an explanation for this??
So many people are having issues with the whole "auto-save" thing, and it's causing people to lose their saved game. Maxis should just remove it entirely. When I found out that auto-save was gonna be included in the game, I was very pleased. But this is definitely NOT the "auto-save" I had in mind.
Only use the "save as" feature for now, do a lot of backups. Every time I play a family I use save as then immediately go to the Sims "saves" folder and make a copy elsewhere on my HD. Awaiting to hear from EA on my tech ticket regarding the issue, so far no luck with that whatsoever. :/
I will add my name to the list of those that have lost hours of game play due to 'losing Saves'. I will definitely try the solutions recommended by @stewielover1992. I don't think I overwrote my old games because when I played again after I lost my saves I only did a Save As and renamed each time and I stayed away from Save and Exit. I Saved then Exited without saving. That is what I think is part of the issue - I previously had used Save and Exit - just to be sure I had saved...Duh.... . I haven't checked yet this evening to see if those new Save As games got 'lost'. Hoping for a patch soon.
Comments
Credits go to @stewielover1992 for this post:
"1. Back up your"saved" file to your desktop just in case. You'll find it at C:\Users\[Your name]\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Saves
2. Now in your saved file you'll have different versions for slot_00000001 and slot_00000002. Slot_00000001 is for autosave, so you don't change anything. Your latest saved game game should be Slot_00000002.save.ver0, so in order to play it you delete the ".ver0" part to make it a saved game.
3. Boot the game, and you should see two saved files. Click on the one that doesn't say (auto).
It probably won't be your very latest saved game, but that's all that is available."
... As for a fix. This problem needs to be fixed ASAP. I haven't had it happen to me again but you never know when all your hard work will be gone with this problem.
I don't believe there is any confirmation yet for when a new patch will come out. I just hope saved games issue gets fixed in it
In case any Gurus DO happen to look at this thread, the events that led up to this were:
I played the game a while, then saved and exited to eat dinner.
Returned to game, and hit the big "play" arrow instead of the little "load" icon at the top. The wrong game loaded, NOT the one I had most recently played and saved.
I returned to the main menu without saving, went to hit the "load" icon, and accidentally hit the "new game" icon instead (grrr) and wound up in CAS, which I of course exited.
THEN I hit "load game." It showed two saved games: The auto save (slot 1), and one other (slot 3,) NEITHER of which turned out to be the game I had been playing less than an hour before when I loaded them.
When I looked at the files in the saves folder, there was a veritable cornucopia of files, with assorted ver.#'s. I sorted them by Date Modified, and noticed that all of them that had today's date and a timestamp of just a minute or so ago were the exact same size, except ONE, which was larger. I renamed that one to use slot 2 - the game I was playing had more households in it, so it made sense it would be bigger. So yeah, that worked.
But aside from the fact that it --for reasons unknown -- chose to put a game I hadn't played since early yesterday into the autosave slot 1 spot, and turn the one I was playing and saved last into a .ver.# backup file, why in the world is it creating so many of these backup save files, each of which is a megabyte or larger?! There were ("were" because I deleted them) 12 of them, going all the way up to ver.4. I mean, it's good to have automatic backups, I guess, but that's kind of excessive considering I only had 2 used game slots...
I guess that for anyone who is having this problem, you could theoretically go into that folder and if you can't figure out which file MIGHT be the game you're actually looking for, you could rename all those .ver.# files and use slot numbers that haven't been used yet and load them up to see which one is the right one. I'd definitely back up that folder first though, in case you make a mistake.
If you only had one saved game going, or only one save for that game, I am sorry to say you will not be able to get it back as it is corrupt.
When I started up TS4 after it crashed my game had this orange notification telling me: "The save game you are attempting to load was saved with a newer version of The Sims 4 than is currently installed. Please update in order to safely load this save game."
After checking the forums and seeing someone had deleted their save file and a few other things, that it made that notification stop showing up on start up, I decided to do some testing to find out what was the actual cause.
My solution was to move all of my save files from C:\Users\*Your User Profile*\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves
to somewhere safe (for me this was a new folder I created on my desktop) and move them back in one grouping at a time and started up TS4 each time to see if the floppy disk was back. Every other save file grouping that was NOT the corrupt save was able to be loaded and played just fine.
Now what I mean by grouping is:
"Slot_00000002.save
Slot_00000002.save.ver0
Slot_00000002.save.ver1
Slot_00000002.save.ver2
Slot_00000002.save.ver3
Slot_00000002.save.ver4"
NOTE: Save Slot 1 in my experience has always been the auto-save.
The update and repair option for the game isn't automatic, either. You apparently have to go to Origin and off click on the Sims 4 icon. Really obscure, EA. My boyfriend found this out late last night when he was trying to help me. No updates or repair appeared to happen when he clicked on the option. But if updates are not automatic for this game... that's also unforgivable. Jeez.
So what I do because I wasn't searching the forum back then, I was so 🐸🐸🐸🐸 off, and tired of working on this family, so I just moved them into into house where they used to live before this save problem, and make it all speed up- fast married fast kid no memories no screenshots no having fun with game, just back where I was. I had to go through this ridiculous step putting random sim from library in the empty lot, motherlode like crazy move in to a house where my family lived before, then moving from one family to another tool or something like that. Because I couldn't find a way to move into a house a one sim from a whole family/roommates. My sims before they got married they were living in a different houses with couple of roommates, dorm kinda thing.
Oh gosh hope someone will understand me. Anyhow after that incident I kept saving like crazy to both autosave and "Hope will work" yup that's the name of my save. The problem doesn't repeat since then, but doesn't makes this all ok, or less scary that this actually can repeat when you'll be having a whole long family line, of course if you don't give up sooner on this game because all this difficulties. Maybe it didn't occurred again because I turned offline in game, less freezing and kicking out of game after that. Something is truly wrong with online gaming The Sims 4. You wanna see the content of other creators, it'll kick you out from game in no time. Oh and also, after every major change in my family members number I save then in library and just in case the whole game will blow up my computer and all TS4 folders I uploadthem to gallery. How come only base game could cause so many problems, and what about those who would want all the expansion packs for it which will be released someday? that would be interesting
It feels like players do all testing instead of creators crue... Very sad, such a great game
. This issue better not happen again or I will not play the game until the issue is fixed.
Forget "if it happens again" I'm not playing it until it is fixed. If this isn't fixed by them soon I'm bound to raise a one person riot on the forums. I paid $70 bucks for the "Digital Deluxe" Edition and I can't even play the game without it going stupid and deleting a weeks worth of progress?
This is happening to me also. Just thought I'd add myself here to show how many people it's happening to.
For me, my boyfriend saved his own game earlier on today. As I've gone to load mine it had completely disappeared and isn't even in the EA>Sims4>Saves folder.
Hope they can fix this problem, as now I'm scared to get into a new game for it to only be lost again?
After that incident I started to carefully save game frequently so that it wouldn't happen again.
Well so far so good but today something weird happened. The saved game was there but it was an old save. It wasn't at the point I'd saved for the last time. It was a save from way back. It's really nerve-racking!
Has anyone an explanation for this??
Angry Poops aren't angry enough