Hover your mouse over The Sims 4 game in Origin and right click your mouse. Make sure you are online. A bunch of options should come up and "Repair Game" should be there. Click it. What will happen is then Origin will then do a process similar to downloading a game and you will have to wait for this to finish.
I HAVE HAD THIS PROBLEM after every Sims 4 Update.
There is a work around to this problem, if Repair Game doesn't work. (often I will get an error message after The Sims4 tries to re-install)
If your game doesn't allow you to play after the repair. 1st, try logging out of Origin and then back in and see if "Play" is available. For some reason Origin sometimes works perfectly if you log out and then back in again. "Play" does sometimes come back on it's own. You do need to be online though.
If not then try these steps as they work for me every time. This is for Windows.
When Origin won’t let you "play" the Sims4 after Sims4 update or Repair (WINDOWS)
BEFORE you follow below instructions, go into My Documents>EA Games> The Sims 4> Saves and copy your last saved game into another folder. That way if you lose all your progress you can just copy and paste it back into the Sims Save folder when you need too. Alternatively in My Documents Copy and paste your entire Sims4 folder as a back-up. You should really do this anyway.
Go to Origin's website and download Origin again. Save the file into Downloads. It should be named OriginThinSetup.exe. (Origin is free to download)
1.Uninstall Origin from Control Panel>Programs>Uninstall
2. Reinstall Origin from: “Downloads” folder.
3.Don’t update The Sims4 again in Origin.
You should now be able to play the Sim4 and the updates should be up to date too. It may prompt you to update again, but don't. It is likely the same thing will happen again about the Play button disappearing.
This has been happening to me for over 9 months and multiple reports to Origin. There only suggestion to me was to reinstall The Sims 4 in safe mode and that didn't work either.
It is a * to keep uninstalling and reinstalling Origin, but it is the only way I can Play the Sims games.
P.S. Everytime I have done this all my games and everything are all there when I reinstall Origin, you shouldn't have a blank game library if that is a worry.
I hope this helps.
