The Sims is a beloved video game series in which players can create their friends, family, and even any fictional characters they desire and control how their day-to-day lives turn out. The Sims 4 is the latest installment in this iconic franchise, and fans still have plenty of new content to look forward to over the next few months. The latest expansion to The Sims 4 called High School Years is about to be released. However, a recent patch to prepare players' copies of the game for the new content came with a glitch that ages Sims rapidly with ease.
Just like many other continuously updating games, The Sims 4 received a patch on July 26 to make sure that the new additions to the game mesh well with what came before. Among the changes are the new sexual orientation features spoken about in recent official posts from EA, curved walls when building houses, and many more. However, with a game as huge as TS4, it's understandable that a few bugs would need to be ironed out with how much is being added.
After the patch went live, fans quickly discovered that Sims all across players' worlds would immediately grow older when the player entered and then exited the "Create a Sim" menu if the "long lifespan" feature was turned on. The "Create a Sim" menu is used rather frequently during a player's time with the title for many different reasons, such as changing outfits.
For some players, this is seen as a huge inconvenience as all it took were a few outfit changes and suddenly half their town would be made up of elderly Sims or Sims in the process of passing away. Others find the update hilarious, and many fans have taken advantage of the bug to quickly kill off entire towns of Sims within minutes.
Even though the characters in the game aren't meant to age so fast, the glitch comes with a few interesting side effects, such as some Sims being depressed that the other Sims around them had forgotten their birthday. Depending on players' games, other issues have been reported like the bars showing Sims' needs not being accurate, leading to characters starving by accident.
Currently Maxis, the developer for The Sims 4, asks that fans avoid the long lifespan feature for now as that option being turned on seems to be the source of the problem. Many players are hoping that the bug is patched out in time for the High School Days expansion's launch. It's easy to see how Sims suddenly aging from being high schoolers to adults could cause issues with the content found in the new DLC. Hopefully, for those who enjoy having their Sims live a little longer than average, an update will fix the issue soon.
The Sims 4 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
