The newest Sims 4 update is live ahead of the High School Years expansion, bringing the wants and fears system back and maybe killing your Sims on accident, depending on your settings. The life game update reintroduced the Sims’ aging bug, where your Sim ages every time the game transitions scenes – so, when it loads, when you enter the Create A Sim screen, check out the world map, and most of the things you’ll inevitably end up doing at some point during a Sims 4 session.
That means your Sim gets very old, very fast, which is good if you want to speed up their rendezvous with Death and not good for basically any other situation.
It seems only games with long life span enabled are vulnerable to the bug.
It’s causing a bit of confusion among newer Sims players as well, with some asking on The Sims 4’s Reddit page what they did wrong in the game settings to where this is the result.
Maxis posted an acknowledgement on the game’s official Twitter page a day after the initial complaints started appearing, saying the best way to deal with it while the issue gets sorted is to just play with a normal lifespan instead.
However, one of the heroes – longtime helpers on EA’s forums – who responded to an early complaint on The Sims bug reports page said it’s also having unexpected consequences if you change the setting to short life span on the same file. Your sims just get younger instead. It’s better than death, but still not ideal.
For the time being, it’s probably best to just start a new save file and leave your current Sims safely alone.
If you’re planning on picking up the High School Years pack, a new file might be just the thing anyway – a fresh Sim to take advantage of the new social updates and identity options, ranging from body hair and new clothes to sexual orientation toggles and more. Or you can just use Sims 4 mods to remove death from your game entirely.