The Sims 4 Quality of Life Update – Full October 2026 Q&A
Question: Are there any new recipes?
SimDevMorgan: No new recipes in this update.
Question: With this new food & drinks update, will Sims stop automatically drinking the Specter Sip from Paranormal Stuff? I hate that my max-skilled Sims keep drinking up the ones I saved for decoration.
SimDevConor: No, but that’s a good callout. I’d prefer people display those objects for fun.
Question: Will things like cakes be recategorized under the Baking skill if you have Get to Work?
SimDevMorgan: No, I asked about that when I was new to the team too. Because Baking is part of a pack, that isn’t possible, unfortunately.
Question: I was curious about one of the things listed in the Laundry List. What kind of “details” may need to be added back in? (“We’ve resolved an issue that caused an infinite white screen when attempting to load into certain affected save files. While some lot details in these saves may need a little rebuilding, you will now be able to safely jump back into your worlds and reunite with your households. (Base Game)”)
SimDevCarlos: This is an issue with just the lot itself being corrupted. We added a new warning to show if a legacy save has this issue, but the rest of the save, Sims, other lots, should still be working as intended.
Question: For starters, can we clarify what the “• More” part of the bug fixes was?
SimDevMorgan: Haha, it should have said “+ More” but it got turned into a bullet. But those are just a lot more bug fixes. We had over 150, and the Laundry List is supposed to be more of a preview.
Question: How extreme will the effect from the calories be? Will Sims experience weight gain the same as they do now, or will it be tweaked to match the update?
SimDevCarlos: For calories there’s 2 sides of it. There’s a toggle so that calories (or exercise) don’t change the Sim’s body, so a pretty extreme change. If you’re referencing the rebalance, that’s more on design, but it’s way less extreme than turning it off!
Question: Just for clarification, after the fix, when werewolves bite fairies, does it mean their occult gets switched from fairy to werewolf?
SimDevMorgan: Yes, that’s how it works!
Question: Are we getting a possible fix for the “Using Only These” pack filter having no results when mixing several packs? It kind of makes the Gallery unusable for people who don’t have every single pack.
SimDevMorgan: I haven’t seen that one come across my plate as a top issue players are voting on at the moment, but please report or vote on it on EA Forums! We pay a lot of attention to that.
Question: Could you list some of the pack-specific recipes that have been added to the Family Recipe feature?
SimDevMorgan: It’s way too many. It’s over 375. MOST things work now. There are very few recipes that aren’t in it.
Question: For the Laundry List, can you tell us a bit more about locking TVs?
SimDevMorgan: Televisions are now able to be locked similarly to computers to ensure only certain Sims will use certain Televisions. As an example: You’ve built a playroom for your Child Sim, but the adults keep using that Child playroom TV… now, you can set it so only that specific Child uses it.
Question: I’m so excited for this update, thank you for all you guys do! The Sim options dialogue and locking TVs is huge!
SimDevMorgan: I know, I’ve really wanted it when I play! Glad others are also excited!
Question: How do you estimate the amount of calories when updating the foods in the upcoming update, since most of the recent ones had 0 calories?
SimDevConor: Yeah, the unintended zero-calorie foods were fixed.
Question: Can you provide more details on the calorie changes? Should we expect higher or lower numbers generally?
SimDevMorgan: We put a lot of thought into the numbers we used for the calorie changes. Sometimes they went up, sometimes down. We tried not to be too drastic, but there were also a lot of items that weren’t tuned at all.
SimDevMorgan: DID YOU KNOW: chumcha = food or eating in Simlish?!
Question: Is it just my impression, or does leaving OneDrive turned on really increase the probability of the game crashing? Are you working on crashes connected to this, like moving those files somewhere else?
SimDevCarlos: We did some changes a couple of months ago to help with this, but our save files are quite heavy, so if OneDrive tries to copy them to the cloud, it can cause issues. I’d make sure it doesn’t automatically back up your Save folder, or only do it when the game is closed.
Question: Could Pay Bills be moved to the top of the phone menu, similarly to how you moved the “Open” interaction to the front of the pie menu for fridges?
SimDevMorgan: Yeah, I think so. Is that something players want?
SimDevCade: Yes pls.
SimDevMorgan: I’ll write it down!
Question: Was that related to the Laundry List though?
SimDevCade: Yes, because I shoehorned it into the fridge thing!
SimDevMorgan: As a note, this update will also come with some free Build Mode items and CAS outfits for Elders! Won’t say more, but there’s more information in the Patch Notes.
Question: Is there a new fix for Sims sitting down to eat? They won’t sit down and say that something is blocking them.
SimDevMorgan: There are a variety of fixes regarding this. A general one that’s coming was around multi-tasking and talking. However, there are a lot for Dine Out specifically relating to Sims getting pulled out of their eating loop to do other things. Some were pretty funny sounding. As an example (Patch Note Preview): “Sometimes dinner demands honor! Otherwise, you really just want your Sims to stay seated and eat… Sims will no longer autonomously get up to Duel each other with swords while eating at a Restaurant. (Dine Out, Royalty & Legacy)”
Question: I’d love Stroopwafels, since we had a part-Dutch world without any recipes.
SimDevCade: Stroopwafels the GOAT.
SimDevMorgan: In Simlish: tasty = nooshy / noosh noosh. Funnily, this can also be used in a flirty/romantic way!
Question: A very, very important Dine Out question: has there been any improvement to the speed at which our Sims get their meals delivered? Many players have had their Sims wait hours for food. Has this been looked into?
SimDevMorgan: We didn’t make specific changes to timing, but we did fix a series of bugs that were slowing down food delivery due to autonomy interruptions. As a note, while we were playtesting, we did also notice the more space a Restaurant venue has, the longer it takes food to be delivered. So it’s also good when building to be mindful of how long Sims will need to walk to get to a table to help keep it flowing well. That said… we’re hoping this also runs smoother due to our fixes.
Question: Are there any fixes/updates in this upcoming patch, not listed in the Laundry List, that you’re excited for and can share with us now?
SimDevCarlos: We fixed the Edit Outfit button for restaurant uniforms.
Question: Did you also do this for Get to Work and vets too?
SimDevCade: Not for this one, sorry!
Question: I want to be able to lock the fridge just like the computer!
SimDevMorgan: We looked into doing this because we got this feedback before, but it was a very complex issue to try and go after, unfortunately. We are, however, very interested in knowing what the instances are where you feel Sims shouldn’t be using a fridge. Please feel free to report on EA Forums, because those are likely bugs we can go after.
SimDevMorgan: SIMLISH: yombeelah = eating/eating place (not as commonly used as chumcha).
Question: While making fixes to eating and dining, did you also look at Sims’ eating behaviors tied to the food stall with Home Chef Hustle? There are issues with Sims grabbing food and not eating it or putting it down, or, with Parenthood installed, making the food stall food a sack lunch and dropping it.
SimDevMorgan: We do have some fixes around Home Chef Hustle. I think they have to do with pricing and food.
Question: Is it already possible to cook Businesses & Hobbies’ family recipes in an owned restaurant? Could my Sim teach a family recipe to their chefs and have them served as a classic dish?
SimDevMorgan: I’m sorry, but I’m not sure. I’ve never tried that.
Question: Did you by chance fix the tea selling for zero?
SimDevMorgan: I don’t think that was one, but please report it if not. I don’t remember seeing a bug for it.
Question: We still need this to be done for the Pressure Cooker in For Rent, please.
SimDevMorgan: We did fix over-autonomy for the Pressure Cooker!
Question: Is there any particular reason why soda cans in the game get washed up with regular dishes instead of Sims always throwing them in the trash? It’s oddly immersion-breaking to see a Sim pick an empty can up, take it over to a sink to wash it, and see it turn into a white bowl in the process.
SimDevMorgan: Probably just the way they were set up. It seems like an oversight to me. I’d say please feel free to report that one, and we’d get a bug logged. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about it before, so it won’t be in this update in particular.
Question: Will Scientist potions still have effects on Sims if their weight toggle is turned off?
SimDevConor: If their toggle is off, anything that changes weight or muscles will also be negated. Things like the Satisfaction Point reward store potions come to mind too.
Question: Simmers always finding new ways to do things even the devs never intended, I love that!
SimDevMorgan: The bane of game development.
Question: I read in the Laundry List that one of the bartender bugs is fixed, but there were two separate issues contributing to it. Were both fixed? (Namely, bartenders kept getting distracted so a new one would come to the lot, and the other bug was them multitasking and not taking the order.)
SimDevMorgan: No, I’d have to look it up to get the exact wording, but there IS A SECOND bartender bug that IS NOT FIXED in this update. I was careful with the wording on the one we did fix. We are still investigating it though.
Question: Poor devs, bombarded with 20 questions!
SimDevMorgan: I love the questions! It’s sometimes hard to keep up! So always thank you for your patience!
Question: Was there any particular challenge or funny thing you could tell us about for this update?
SimDevConor: Playtesting restaurants, my diners all got up and started dueling. It was then and there I knew I needed to shut that down.
SimDevMorgan: SO I LOVED writing the bug text for Sims not staying at the tables for Dine Out. So funny. Like: “Sims will no longer autonomously get up to give themselves a Pep Talk in the Mirror when eating at a Restaurant. Self encouragement is great! Just maybeeeee not while trying to eat.” Or: “No more zooming! Sims will no longer autonomously get up from dining at a Restaurant to go play with Paper Airplanes. (Adventure Awaits)” There are like 11 of these and they make me giggle. My favorite was: “Customers will no longer leave their table to go dig in the trash.”
Question: Considering this is the last of the QoL Roadmap, what is there left for the rest of the year? Should we be excited?
SimDevConor: I think there is plenty of exciting QoL stuff we’re working on next year for sure.
SimDevMorgan: SIMLISH: gulga = drinking
SimDevMorgan: SIMLISH: gulgala = drinking to excess
Question: Did we just get Simlish for alcoholic?
SimDevCade: That is clearly water!
Question: Rating of the game.
SimDevConor: Beat me to it. Fun fact, we had to remove mentions of “Cider” before, since it’s only non-alcoholic in America, as I’m told.
Question: Any chance of looking into the bartender behaviour I mentioned previously? Are only NPC behaviours affected, or anyone tending a bar? If a bartender is already tending a bar and is part of the group, when ordering a drink (with someone else), the task to get a drink overrules “Tend Bar”, and they all just keep staring at each other. You always have to cancel that action for the (non-NPC) bartender when that happens.
SimDevCarlos: We did do some fixes around this, but it is not only for bartenders. Sims getting stuck in social can happen in a lot of interactions, and we’ve been squashing those left and right (there’s an infant fix in this patch for this), and we tackled some of the times it happens for bartenders as well.
Question: The Sims Medieval mentioned!
SimDevCarlos: No one mentions Castaway though.
Question: Can you share a bit about how food prices were rebalanced?
SimDevMorgan: One of our designers created a spreadsheet with EVERY RECIPE on it, including a baseline price and various serving type prices. Then they went through and filled in the pricing tuning suggestions, using lots of highlight colors. Conor and I reviewed, and then they began the arduous task of updating all of those recipes in game. Same for calories. Calories was a little more difficult, since we didn’t want to over-change those and make things feel too punishing or impactful. We wanted a light touch while still making sure they were tuned and balanced.
Question: Sounds like a LOT of work!
SimDevMorgan: He did a great job! It was a lot of work. One of those things that isn’t hard to do, but took a lot of time due to the scale of the task.
Question: But I am sorry to the designer if that was torment, haha.
SimDevConor: I had to give the new guy something arduous to do (he’s a trooper).
Question: Were all the zero-calorie dishes removed then? Any still left?
SimDevMorgan: I think there were a few that were left. Ex: We left some salads at 0. We know that isn’t realistic, but we also wanted calories to feel somewhat intuitive. Like if you’re trying to eat foods that won’t increase weight gain, we didn’t want the player to feel like the game wasn’t meeting expectation, even if expectation isn’t realistic. Does that make sense?
Question: Why do some foods have really long descriptions and others not? There are some foods I don’t know as a German, and it’s a bit of a bummer having to Google them when the game could provide a brief description, at least in the fridge menu. It makes some foods stand out as “rare/unknown” and others as “normal”, when in my country a lot of those are equally foreign to me.
SimDevMorgan: Different designers design different recipes. Designers often write the text for their recipes, and some have different preferences on if we’re informative, or cute, or accurate… so we don’t have a standard necessarily, though we do try to be consistent where we can with text.
Question: Have the prices of garden produce been altered at all? Sometimes it feels really cheaty with how much some garden produce and flowers sell for.
SimDevMorgan: We didn’t do that in this update. Could work well with a Seasons-themed QoL update if we did something like that in the future though…
Question: I love the Rebirth feature! Would love to hear about the fix process.
SimDevConor: Unrelated, but I’m glad you like Rebirth. It was a huge, huge undertaking to get working. Also happy it was fixed.
SimDevMorgan: SIMLISH: sipola = take a drink
Question: Just a note, I think it’d be helpful if questions that developers are currently answering could be reacted to with Discord reactions, just so that person knows their question is going to be answered by a dev in a second.
SimDevCade: Get out of here with your logic! (We’re all on a Zoom call, but for real, that sounds better.)
Question: Any idea why losing weight over time by not ingesting calories was never implemented as part of the game design? Right now, you only lose weight by exercising, no?
SimDevMorgan: Honestly, we looked into nutrition and a better system. It would have been a lot of work to do well and right. Not saying we won’t or can’t, just that, with all the other things in this update, there were a lot of things we would have had to skip over to tackle something like this. A calorie tuning pass was a lighter touch we could do now and still get all of the other fixes and changes we did with this update in. It’s a great idea though, and something we have discussed.
Question: I thought you were all in the same room, just chilling at your computers!
SimDevConor: I’m on the East Coast while everyone else is on the West Coast too!
Question: I guess there are different EA studios, like Redwood Shores, Austin, and Europe.
SimDevCarlos: Yup! The Sims team is around multiple EA offices.
SimDevCade: We’re everywhere: EA Studios by location
SimDevMorgan: SIMLISH (gross edition): bromf = nauseous from eating or drinking/barf
SimDevCade: Quite the onomatopoeia.
Question: Does ice cream have ingredients now?
SimDevMorgan: We didn’t touch that for this update, unfortunately.
Question: Will there be any more codes for PC, or can I go pee?
SimDevMorgan: USE THE BATHROOM.
Question: So PlayStation was forgotten about?
SimDevMorgan: We had an issue getting those in time. Cade is looking into giving them away at a different time.
Question: Any plans to turn traits like Lactose Intolerant and Vegetarian into something that doesn’t take up a personality slot (like the ones you can buy with points)?
SimDevMorgan: This is something we think about a lot now. Some Traits came before Preferences existed, unfortunately. And if Sims have them applied, it’s weird to remove them. We try to be mindful going forward, but I wouldn’t expect to see a change like this immediately.
SimDevMorgan: hank you all today for joining us for the Q&A! It’s always great to get to chat with you. Check out the Patch Notes when they release for a full overview of all of the fixes coming! AS AN ACTUAL TEASER (though I might have hinted earlier):
We’re planning to do another Dev Drop In (in the coming months) to get feedback and talk to you about a Seasons & Events (meaning like parties) themed update for sometime next year!
our suggestions and notes have been so helpful with these, and we’d love to get your ideas! See you then!