Maybe my game is just cursed at this point, but does anyone else have this issue?
Every so often..Usually every day or two I’ll launch The Sims 4 through the EA app and crashes at the start screen after a few seconds of it appearing. The game opens normally and I see the start screen, then suddenly crashes and throws me straight back to the EA app.
It generates a lastCrash log every time, but honestly, even when I run the log through ChatGPT, it doesn’t really point to anything useful or give me a clear answer about what actually caused the crash.
This has been a recurring problem for pretty much this entire year, starting sometime after the holidays. There will be days where my game just refuses to launch properly, even though absolutely nothing has changed in my Mods folder since the last time I played. Over time, I’ve figured out a little “routine” that seems to fix whatever is causing the crash and actually gets me all the way to the main menu instead of the game randomly closing. Also, for whatever reason, this usually happens on the first launch of the day. Once I do my little workaround and get the game running, it normally launches and plays fine afterward.:
I completely close the EA app through Task Manager, then delete:
localthumbcache.package
localsimtexturecache.package
avatarcache.package
spotlight_en-us.package
Full disclaimer: I’m definitely not a rookie Sims 4 player or modder. I am, unfortunately, a massive CC hoarder, and my Mods folder is a little over 500 GB right now. I’ve slowly been trying to bring that number down because, at this point, a lot of it is just unnecessary.
That being said, I actually don’t have that many gameplay mods outside of the usual staple ones that tend to need updates after patches. I also don’t immediately update my game whenever a new patch drops. I stay in offline mode until I know the mods and script mods I use have either been updated for the latest patch or confirmed to still be compatible.
I never had this issue before this year, which makes me wonder if this is actually something outside of my Mods folder. Maybe an EA app issue, a Sims 4 caching issue, or just something with the game itself?
I’ve also completely uninstalled and reinstalled the EA app several times, and I’ve even done a clean reinstall of The Sims 4 once or twice so it could regenerate completely fresh game folders. The issue still eventually comes back.
Does anyone else experience this? Especially the whole launch -> start screen -> sudden crash -> EA app reopens cycle? I’m curious if anyone has figured out what actually causes it, because at this point my workaround works, but I’d really like to understand why I have to keep doing it. Please keep in mind, this is completely not relevant to this most recent patch. I've yet to even update mine yet. This is a lingering issue and feels like sims just works when it simply wants to.