Launching the game while download is in progress can negatively affect gameplay

[Promie15]

I bought some expansions packs for The Sims 4 and I want to wait until Christmas to download them. When I tried to play Sims 4 today, I received a message saying that "launching this game while a download is in progress can negatively affect gameplay". I continued and, once the game loaded, Origin tried to automatically download the games. 

1. How badly will my game be affected if I try to play Sims 4 before Christmas?

2. Is there a way to store the games away so that they won't try to download until later? I noticed under the downloads tab that I can click an X to cancel the download, but I do not want to click that unless I am sure that I will be able to restore my purchases later.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Promie15  Your game won't be negatively impacted from playing while packs are downloading.  The only problem would be if you were redownloading packs that used to be present but were deleted, and your current save used features from those packs.  The message you saw is more generic, a warning that it might be an issue instead of a guarantee that it will.

You can absolutely cancel the downloads and start them later, or uninstall packs and redownload them later.  Your content is owned by your account, not your computer or the particular install of Sims 4 you currently have.  If the packs have already downloaded, you can disable them in Origin as well:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2017/03/disable-single-packs/

Origin will try to keep downloading the packs though.  You can decrease the frequency by disabling automatic game updates: hover over your username, select Application Settings, and under Application (the first header), scroll down to Client update and disable auto game updates.  After that, Origin will likely only restart the downloads after a patch, possibly after a game repair, and after you clear Origin's cache, and it may not do so until you get to the Main Menu.  In that case, just alt-tab back to Origin and cancel the downloads again.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Promie15  Your game won't be negatively impacted from playing while packs are downloading.  The only problem would be if you were redownloading packs that used to be present but were deleted, and your current save used features from those packs.  The message you saw is more generic, a warning that it might be an issue instead of a guarantee that it will.

You can absolutely cancel the downloads and start them later, or uninstall packs and redownload them later.  Your content is owned by your account, not your computer or the particular install of Sims 4 you currently have.  If the packs have already downloaded, you can disable them in Origin as well:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2017/03/disable-single-packs/

Origin will try to keep downloading the packs though.  You can decrease the frequency by disabling automatic game updates: hover over your username, select Application Settings, and under Application (the first header), scroll down to Client update and disable auto game updates.  After that, Origin will likely only restart the downloads after a patch, possibly after a game repair, and after you clear Origin's cache, and it may not do so until you get to the Main Menu.  In that case, just alt-tab back to Origin and cancel the downloads again.

[Promie15]

Thank you!