The Life of a Sims 4 Bug

Sul Sul!

In yesterday's Laundry List we provided a behind the scenes look at the process we follow of identifying and resolving bugs in The Sims 4. In the interest of transparency as well as to preserve this information for future audiences I've transcribed it here as well:

🐞 Issue is Discovered & Verified

When a player reports an issue via our EA Forums, a friendly Community Manager or EA Forums superuser will see if help can be provided through troubleshooting and alternative methods to try, confirming if the game is working as intended, or if this may be an issue related to mods. If not, they'll check whether the issue has already been reported to merge it with an existing thread or start a new one. A ticket is then made for our Quality Assurance (QA) team to review. They may need to collect more information from players to reproduce the bug on their devices, which is critical for the next steps and why we always encourage players to provide as much specific detail as possible when reporting an issue. 

Our Sims teams are also discovering and reporting issues internally that get documented alongside player reported issues. Due to the wide variety of freedom with The Sims 4, plus the randomness and variation in playstyles and player options, it’s impossible to truly test every possible scenario. This means that some issues may only appear in specific environments, and while we strive to address as many as we can prior to launch, we appreciate your understanding. When QA is able to reproduce the issue, they will file a ticket for an engineer to review and give it a severity rating, which can depend on how many votes it has received and how disruptive to gameplay the issue is for players. Your votes matter!

🔎 Fix is Investigated & Created

A team of engineers will be assigned to work on an issue and figure out the cause. The scope, type, and risk of bug fixes can vary wildly, from relatively simple fixes through to complete code system restructures. Given the almost infinite variations of devices, operating systems, unique combinations The Sims 4 content installed, unique gameplay styles, and mods downloaded, it can be no small feat to identify the root cause! 

Once the engineer understands what’s causing the technical issue, they can start to plan how to best resolve it. Fixes can bring their own unique challenges, such as accidentally introducing more issues, which is the last thing we want to do. When the engineer has created a fix, the QA team comes back into the mix, to test each fix before it’s released to ensure the fix works as intended across all platforms. 

🚀 Fix is Deployed to Players

If that all looks good, the code is then submitted for review for final approval. Once approved, it’s scheduled to be deployed during a specific release. We understand that with each update, there’s the potential to disrupt your gameplay, and so our team takes care to group as many fixes together as possible to limit downtime.

This essential yet often behind-the-scenes work involves collaboration across multiple teams. We prioritize issues based on both the reports and votes from the community, as well as the bugs identified by our QA team. Thank you for your continued reports and votes on what issues you want us to address!