The Sims 4 July 2026 Update: Full Developer Q&A Recap

---

Question: Aside from autosave what was added?

Morgan: Autosave, Save Reminder, and Memory Boost are the primary aspects of this patch. On a smaller note, we are adding 3 new swatches for a City Living oven to give parity to the BG version and a new festival toggle for Nordhaven.

---

Question: can the reminder be turned off?

Conor: It can be turned off too

---

Question: Will Memory Boost work alongside Game Mode on Mac or should we turn it off when we're playing TS4?

Dmitrii: Memory Boost will work everywhere in every mode.

---

Question: so im assuming PC/console/mac all get autosave

Morgan: Autosave and Save Reminder are for PC, Mac, and Consoles. Consoles have Autosave already, but we gave them the improved experience. It can be turned off for everyone except Console users - but they can change frequency settings.

---

Question: Dose [sic] it tell you when its saving like when you manually save?

Morgan: Yes, it should tell you when it is saving.

---

Question: Are the roofs back?

Morgan: Yes, we have a fix for the roof issue in this update.

---

Question: Would you recommend Deleting old ones for those who still have that save (yes that's a thing) or will the patch check for it and delete? Overwriting may cause issues?

Morgan: I don't know, but that's a good question. I'll follow up with QV to ask about that.

---

Question: I'm excited about the memory boost... I'm wondering what improvements we'll see once that is in play!

Dmitrii: “Memory Boost improves how The Sims 4 manages memory while you play, helping deliver a smoother experience with reduced lag, improved frame rates and responsiveness, shorter loading times, and a lower risk of memory-related crashes”

---

Question: A question for the engineers: has the team looked into making the option to save available during CAS? Philosophically it seems easy enough to imagine that saving during CAS would be like saving during build, where whatever has been changed so far gets saved to the current household and you just keep working, so what makes that undoable, if anything?

Mike: CAS and Build Mode don’t use the same save flow, so saving in CAS is more complex than it sounds. You can still use Save Household to keep that household in your Library/Gallery, but that’s separate from saving the full game.

---

Question: Will the memory boost, for console, be the exact same as it is for pc, i.e enable/disabling it or will it just be on all the time?

Dmitrii: It will be on everywhere. No more the option in the menu.

---

Question: you mentioned memory boost helping corrupted lots within saves with many residential rentals, could you tell us a bit more about how those two are correlated? and how it helps?

Morgan: We know that Save Corruption can be caused by overstuffing lots. We've done a lot of investigation into overstuffed player saves, and a lot of the time, when we have memory boost turned on, the saves will load properly - though sometimes they still take a while to load. It has to do with protobuffs and protobuff overflow and is very technical, and I think it's also hardware dependent, save dependent, etc, but we've seen really great results in these instances.

---

Question: Are auto save and Memory boost coming to Mac-Users as well?

Morgan: Yes

---

Question: Will we be able to disable autosave?

Morgan: PC/Mac can disable Autosave.

---

Question: I really would like to know if this patch (save & memory features), will have any impact on the save corruption bug? :)

Dmitrii: We can confirm that some memory corruption bugs are resolved with these features. But we cannot guarantee that all of these bugs have been solved. Please test and let us know.

---

Question: With Memory Boost being standard, is the executable going to stay TS4_x64_fpb.exe, or revert to TS4_x64 for everyone. I ask because we had a giant pile of reports of the game not working that were due to an antivirus blocking the fpb .exe.

Mike: In the new release there will only be TS4_x64.exe; we are retiring the TS4_x64._fpb.exe executable name.

---

Morgan: Real Time Options for Autosave also work WHILE in Build Mode - which I'm very excited about. I know that was a big request since some Simmers spend hours on builds.

---

Question: Is it safe now to use residential rentals in a legacy save?

Morgan: We previously removed the 99 rentals lot cheat, because we do believe that having extreme amounts of rental lots might have been contributing some some cases - though that was hard to verify. And we've fixed some other bugs that are loosely related to residential rentals - including the one in this patch that memory boost has fixed in all our testing. We haven't found any other evidence of Residential Rentals causing corruption.

---

Morgan: While I'm in the options menu grabbing screenshots: New Nordhaven notification toggle option

---

Question: So does memory boost have the potential to actually allow people to open previously corrupted saves that they can’t currently load, or just prevent it in future from saving into a state it can’t open? Sounded like the first?

Mike: Yes, we've seen some cases where memory boost allows opening a save that was previously not working. It's not a magic bullet though: It depends on the cause of the particular issue you are encountering.

---

Question: would you recommend people to have the memory boost feature on then?

Morgan: We would recommend it, and after this update, it will be on.

---

Question: Thank you! Just to clarify, so it's safe to use a normal amount of rentals, say for example 5-10, in the entire save? :)

Morgan: We did extensive testing on rentals with the default number that's allowed. We feel confident saying that number of rentals is safe.

---

Question: And what is the default number that's allowed?

Morgan: I think its around 8? It's the default in game whatever that is.

---

Question: Will the memory boost help with 3x speed lag/issues?

Morgan: We've been investigating that issue, but I don't think we were testing it against Memory Boost specifically. I want to say some of the builds where we've been able to reproduce it had Memory Boost, so I don't think Memory Boost will fully fix that if you do experience it. However, if you see that it does improve that - it'd be very helpful to know because it might lead us to further improvements.

---

Question: How long did it take to get the autosave feature working. And what was the hardest part of doing so?

Morgan: Can't talk about timelines, but I will say the hardest part was probably trying to think through the initial flow of how we wanted to make it work.

---

Question: Will it be possible to turn memory boost on/off?

Morgan: No

---

Question: So does memory boost have the potential to actually allow people to open previously corrupted saves that they can’t currently load, or just prevent it in future from saving into a state it can’t open? Sounded like the first?

Dmitrii: I would say both. We have some experiments done that showed that with a memory boost, we can open saves that were previously considered corrupted. Not all of them, but it was still much better than before. And also, we had some experiments done that showed the corruption itself is reduced.

---

Question: I’m assuming the limitation of needing to be on DX11 for memory boost is still there.

Mike: There will be no DX11 limitation on the memory boost feature.

---

Conor: Also, if anyone is curious

---

Question: I’m just now joining so I apologize if this question has already been asked, but I didn’t wanna miss my opportunity by reading the backlog… With the memory boost update on consoles, should that address the issue where it takes several seconds to switch between family members after playing for several hours? That’s a huge problem where I literally just have to restart the entire game because the lag becomes so problematic and I’m optimistic that this is an opportunity to address that with the development team.

Dmitrii: It could help potentially. I'll suggest trying.

---

Question: What about grumpy gnome's reminder?

Conor: sometimes he'll be a little grumpy, but usually in good spirits

---

Question: Internet says 6 per lot, 99 per save, and you removed the cheat to bypass 99, you said. But I would be scared to have 99 units in a save

Morgan: My advice is always to do things in moderation. So if you have a high end PC and you haven't overstuffed your lots, and you don't have maximum sims in your world, 99 lots across all lots might no be so bad! But when you start doing things in conjunction it gets progressively more likely to corrupt, because you're causing the protobuffers to be bigger and that means its more likely to struggle loading. There isn't a specific cut off for where it becomes 'dangerous.' It's very situationally dependent.

---

Question: Will there be options added later for players who can’t play DX11 to use Memory boost due to hardware limitations. I don’t want to buy a new computer just to reduce my chance of save corruption.

Dmitrii: DX9 will get Memory Boost too!

---

Question: hopefully w'ell get a pic of the autosave slot next to the manual save slot as well

Morgan:

---

Question: would you recommend people to have the memory boost feature on then?

Dmitrii: It will be on everywhere in the next release. There will be no option to disable it.

---

Question: Since you are adding Nordhaven festival notifications, can you please consider adding one for Island Living/Sulani? I hate that I miss out on those festivals because I never know when they're happening.

Morgan: The Nordhaven ones were VERY simple to add because the notifications already existed and we just added a toggle to turn them off. The Sulani ones would take a lot more work, because the notifications don't exist, so we'd have to add them and then add a toggle to remove them.

---

Question: sorry to ask again but is the fix for the roofs will cover older saves?

Morgan: This is a retroactive fix that will be fixed in old saves where it was occurring.

---

Question: Anything to look out for with memory boost for players on lower end computers?

Dmitrii: Nope, but I hope you'll see performance improvements.

---

Question: How does the autosave that will be implemented soon compare to the old autosave system?

Morgan: The single slot aspect is the same as how it was. The new Autosave update is different because we're providing options on when it happens, which should provide a lot of clarity about how it is behaving. Before, that was a big concern with it - because it was confusing. The update also includes Save Reminders which is all completely new.

---

Question: I’m assuming the limitation of needing to be on DX11 for memory boost is still there.

Dmitrii: Nope. DirectX 9 will also get the memory boost.

---

Question: Any update about the longer loading times on main menu?

Morgan: I don't know the answer for that one, unfortunately. Sorry!

---

Question: I'm sorry if this has already been addressed, but will loading times be reduced? Public lots, loading up a save etc.? Also, will a larger world like Sulani with many ongoing simulations run more smoothly?

Dmitrii: Yes, we have reports that loading times are reduced in some cases.

---

Morgan: Sneak Peak: If you have City Living. We also added 3 new swatches for the YumCooker (Used) to have parity with the updates to the BG version of this stove!

---

Question: I know you might not be able to answer, but any update on the food and drink patch you guys were collecting feedback on? I was hoping we would have it by now or soon since that feedback session was months ago.

Morgan: It is still something we're wanting to do for the future. I don't think we're really allowed to talk about specific timelines.

---

Question: I can't remember if I read it correctly, but did thr laundry list for 07-21 state that you guys are adding more improvements to sim autonomy? And if so, can you elaborate further?

Morgan: The team is already working on some autonomy based updates and changes. I'll note that we are basing what we did off of feedback we got from all of you.

---

Question: I understand that the memory boost will be on by default, right? I guess you can confirm it wont affect old saves?... I play this game for long time and have precious old legacy saves... it worries me...

Dmitrii: Yes, we have reports that loading times are reduced in some cases.

---

Question: Are there any plans to improve graphics for high-end systems?

Morgan: We don't have plans for improvements on this sort of thing. However, if you are experiencing issues please post in EA Forums with PC Specs so we can get it tracked.

---

Morgan: SO SOMETHING PRETTY FUN about Save Reminders - there are a bunch of different things the Gnome will say when he reminds you. Conor wrote them, and I think they're hilarious.

They've got like "Press the Red Button" vibes imo.

---

Question: Will it improve speed 3?

Dmitrii: Everything is possible. But that wasn't the feature goal.

---

Question: You kinda answered my earlier one but to be sure: saves that have their houses remove and reduced to 9kb will not revert,right?

Dmitrii: It's impossible to say for sure. But 9 kilobytes doesn't sound very promising.

---

Question: You kinda answered my earlier one but to be sure: saves that have their houses remove and reduced to 9kb will not revert,right?

Dmitrii: It's impossible to say for sure. But 9 kilobytes doesn't sound very promising.