Today, September 1st 2026, The Sims 4 Quality Assurance and Quality Verification team answered the community's questions in the latest Q&A over on the Sims 4 official Discord server. The next update for The Sims 4 is due to launch September 22nd, and with it comes fixes for the most upvoted bug on the forum. The update is also suspected to contain the rest of the recently teased free CAS and Build/Buy items.
Let's take a look at everything the Quality Assurance and Quality Verification teams had to spill!
Table of Contents
The Sims 4 Quality Assurance Q&A Recap
Cade: Welcome to today's Dev Q&A!
In about an hour, we're diving deep into all things QA (Quality Assurance) and QV (Quality Verification)! Our team is here to answer your questions about how we test, verify, track bugs, and ensure overall game quality and stability.
Quick Topic Note:
Today’s focus is strictly on general QA and QV workflows, testing, and processes. We know many of you are eager to discuss Quality of Life updates, but today is not the session for QoL topics! We have a dedicated Dev Q&A session scheduled with the QoL team in a couple of weeks, where they'll be answering all your QoL-related questions.
SimDevAlex: Hey all! Long time no chat. For those who don't remember: I'm Alex, a QA... dude on TS4!
Been working on this wonderful game for 2 and a half years, but I've been in QA for well over a decade!
In my time here my focus has mainly been on helping address YOUR issues and finding ways to be better/faster/smarter about getting them handled. ALSO, I am the father of Plumrobert, and I love that he finally breached containment and made it to ya'll!
ANSWERER: INTRO
Question: Why has QA been reduced in the last few years?
Cade: QA and QV has actually been invested in over the last 2 years.
Question: Is there still a dedicated bug fix team?
SimDevAlex: There's several teams! Including the QoL team which Laura and I have both been a part of since its inception!
Question: how do you decide what bugs you decide are worthy of fixing?
SimDevAlex: There are a lot of factors! Generally things like "impact to game" are considered (like crashes over clipping), and then we consider things from ya'll in the community (like votes in EA Forums) . Potential for adding additional risk is considered as well. (We dont want to try to fix something that makes other things WORSE. )
Question: how is the QA process exactly? you have a list with tasks, or you play freely doing everything you come up with trying to find bugs?
QA Lau: Honestly, there’s no such thing as an exact QA process! It really depends on what we’re working on. First, we establish how a feature is supposed to work and verify that. But the real magic happens when we hunt for the edge cases.
Question: do y'all look at the forums or discord often to know what the players really want?
Cade: All day, every day
Question: Are there any plans to update the gallery and get it working properly? The search features don’t work and It has been reported as broken multiple times.
Cade: We just pushed an update for these issues via a server deployment last week. Please give it a shot now
Question: How much does player feedback influence what QA verifies after a release?
QA Lau: player feedback influences quite a bit! we try to be as connected to the community as possible
Question: Are you using a program to detect bugs, without having to play-test? (If so, what program?)
SimDevAlex: No. Part of working in the games industry means we get to play games!
Follow Up Question: Reading this adds a bit of frustration. The duality of my statement stands in understanding Maxis is housed within a larger ecosystem with business goals, but why and how has so much managed to make it to the consumer with a lack of refinement? I’m a fairly newer simmer, and I’ve been on the forums reporting issues that date back years. Is there never push back from those on the QA + QV teams to alleviate from player and dev headaches? Yall know folks who play sims hold grudges and have mob like energy
SimDevAlex: Since i've been here, we've been making big pushes to fix more bugs more frequently. AND to increase communication. (Like revamping the flow in EA Forums)
Question: How do you all remain so calm? Just asking for a friend.
Cade: I've worked across phones, Twitter, and 3 different forums platforms for a decade here. You can't throw anything at me I haven't seen before.
Question: What’s the most challenging part of the QV process?
SimDevAlex: I've said this before, BUT there as SOOOOOOO many variables in games, wrote about it back in january here: https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/news/sims-qa
Question: Have there been situations where the community discovered a bug that your internal testing completely missed? What makes those bugs so difficult to catch?
QA Lau: Oh, for sure! It definitely happens. The wildest part of the game is that there are so many variables influencing how everyone plays. While we try to take into account as much as possible, a few things can slip by.
Question: How do you balance "your" personal playstyle vs testing for bugs across playstyles when looking for bugs? How much is targeted to looking for something specific vs generally playing and noting what pops up?
SimDevAlex: This is a great question! I (personally) spend a lot of time researching different playstyles. TS4 has so many resources and fans and history that it's really easy to find how different people experience this game. I also have my degree IN Video games, (dorky I know) but it helps deconstruct a lot of ways to go about testing. We have different types of testing (scripted, unscripted) and we do our best to keep them fresh to avoid what's known as "pesticide paradox" ( where we dont change our approach and assume we found all the bugs)
Question: When it comes to quality testing, do you have different spec of machines to test different hardware capabilities?
SimDevAlex: Yes! We test allllll types of configurations, we explicitly maintain machines called "min spec" which are set to the minimum specifications of the game and make sure we are running performance against those.
Question: Hi! This might sound like a silly question, but I was wondering: does the QA team actually fix the bugs themselves, or do they report them to the engineers and the engineers fix them?
QA Lau: That is not a silly question at all! Our main job is to find and diagnose the bugs, and then we work closely with our incredibly talented engineers who dive into the code to actually fix them!
Question: Does any of the team have any legacy families going?
QA Lau: Some of us do!! I have played the sims for a looooong time
Question: When the next update
Cade: Laundry List on the 15th
SimDevAlex: 9/22 !
Question: When bugs are reported, what happens when the bug can’t be recreated by the team? Like maybe only a minimal amount of players are experiencing that bug, does the team just move on, or do they continue trying for a fix? Hope I’m making sense with this question.
Cade: That's typically where I (and the EA Forums team) jump in to try and gather anything we can find as a common denominator to get repro and ship a fix.
Question: what steps go into reviewing and replicating user-reported bugs?
QA Lau: To replicate a bug we find "trigger actions"
Once we can consistently make it happen, we write up the official steps, attach our video evidence, and send it to our developers to fix.
Clear steps, screenshots, and sharing your save files are the absolute best tools you can give our QA team to help us replicate things instantly!
We read your forum reports to understand what went wrong
We try to recreate the exact environment. If you say a Sim glitched while using a specific chair on a specific lot, we go to that exact lot and try it
Question: Have you ever worked with a user filled bug submission form? like a "go here to report bugs" page on the website.
Cade: Answers HQ used to have this. We found that adding a barrier to reporting issues was overall less helpful than an open forum that we can engage with to ask any relevant details, so we ditched it with the move to EA Forums last year.
Question: are the forums the only way you pick up bugs?
SimDevAlex: Nope! We are constantly testing ourselves, but we also keep our eyes open for things across the web, but the forums is the best place!
Question: What’s one near miss moment you’ve had? Where a bug almost slipped by unchecked
SimDevAlex: This happens RARELY, (and it's why we implement checks across the board) but there will be times when you're running unscripted testing and you'll on a whim try something new and you'll catch something serious. It's hardly ever "golden path" and it's sometimes a result of the different "style" of builds that we get. (like when we have 'release candidates' vs 'debug builds') Not going to get into specifics, but generally it's "we found a massive crash when doing [obscure combo of things]"
Question: I will say, the complied list of reported issues was|is a huge helper. Even though my eyes ignored it when it was first implemented, it is such a lift off having to type out a new forum post without realizing one of similar sentiments already exist.
SimDevAlex: The compiled list (and a lot of the help on EA Forums ) comes from @crinrict!
Question: what was your fondest memory of working on the game? what is something that after you are old and grey you think back on?
QA Lau: Honestly, I’ve played The Sims since I was a little kid, so just working here right now is absolutely crazy to me
Question: Is simulation lag and sims canceling interactions on their own a priority in future bug fixes ?
QA Lau: We are looking into this!!
Question: What is it like working in QA? And how many people work int department.
SimDevAlex: Working in QA is great! At times it's challenging. It's really good if you like puzzles, not just solving but also creating them!
Question: Do you have like a quota of bugs you need to identify or fix?
SimDevAlex: Quotas aren't useful for QA. you can have a bunch of bugs that are minor, or 1 bug that is like a crash, they are not equal. It's better to look for the most likely/most impactful bugs, and then go from there. But generally: we bug what we see, when we see it.
Question: are there any challenges in determining bug vs intended feature? have you ever come across a feature players may not like and reported it as a bug, only to be told its supposed to be like that?
SimDevAlex: Part of QA's job is to do our best to represent the player, this includes giving feedback on features and how we think the player will feel about them. So they arent really BUGs, but it is part of the process to engage with the dev.
AI Usage In Quality Assurance
A hot topic of question that many, myself included, were asking about was the usage of AI in Quality Assurance and Quality Verification.
Crinrict, a long-time community bug tracker and troubleshooter (often active in forums, says that many reports on the forum are AI generated, and can make it hard to troubleshoot player issues.
Throughout the Q&A, many were asking questions on this topic, and they were repeatedly ignored. This is likely due to the hosts not knowing whether or not they were allowed to answer questions on this topic. After relentless questioning, it was confirmed that artificial intelligence is used within Quality Assurance to assist with tests and code; however, Cade did stress that human input is vital to the process
The reasoning behind these questions is not without precedent. Back in April, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson went on record saying:
I think, now almost all—like 85%—of our quality assurance [work] is done with some kind of machine learning or AI-driven algorithm
Andrew Wilson | CEO, Electronic Arts
The Sims 4 Next Update Date Revealed
As revealed by Cade and Alex in the Q&A, the next update is set to release on September 22nd 2026, with the laundry list being revealed to players on the 15th, a week beforehand.
Make sure to stay tuned to Sims Community as we will have the Laundry List published as soon as it is revealed!
What are your thoughts on the answers given by the Quality Assurance and Quality Verification teams? Let us know in the comments below, and stay tuned to Sims Community for all the latest on The Sims 4 Updates!
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