Lost all but 1 save

[Reekyteek]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Rarely (0% - 9%)
What is your current game version number? 164841020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All but eco and luxury party
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? I don't know, I was just building a house in one save, decided to switch to gameplay in a different save and it told me I had to name the save I had been playing in. No other saves present.
What happens when the bug occurs? All saves but the one you are in disappear
What do you expect to see? My saved games safe and sound, as I left them in the opening menu of the game.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Never used.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. The july 8th patch came out, I hadn't downloaded it yet. But it came out the day this happened. Other than that no changes since the eco living patches.

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I had 10 savegames including a completed 100baby challenge, a super sim challenge complete up to eco living, and I am on generation 3 of a legacy. I, thankfully had heard a rumor about this bug an hour before it happened to me and had backed up all my saves at that time just in case. I am still shaken by this though. Most of my saves I have been working on for more than a year. I play for hours every day. That is a lot of hours of progress to lose in one fell swoop, and I would have if I didn't read this forum daily and wasn't a member of a sims 4 facebook group. 

No bug I have experienced has freaked me out like this one. I don't even know how I would continue to play the game if I had not performed that back up. 

[RandomBuzziness]

@Reekyteek Good thinking on backing up your Save files! I regularly back up my Saves, Tray, and Mods folders on an external drive, though luckily I have not yet needed to use these backups for any reason.

Were you able to determine if all of your old saves were somehow deleted from your Saves folder? Can you double-check to see if maybe your game switched to a using a different Saves folder, i.e. something on the cloud like OneDrive? Something like this might explain why your Saves folder appeared to be empty. You can find the path to your current Saves folder by hovering on the folder icon in your Load Game screen.

Another easy way to find the path of your current user folder is to go in the Game Options menu, Screen Capture tab and check the Location Path of your video capture files. Here is what my file path looks like:

I know the letters are tiny but this shows my current user folder is on my C: drive in my Documents folder.

C:\Users\Registered User\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4

Anyhow, the important thing is you got all of your old save files back, right? Mostly I'm just asking this stuff in case understanding it better might enable me to help other players in the future.

Thanks :D

I'm just a regular Sims player, I don't work for EA.

[Reekyteek]

Hi @RandomBuzziness , I went back to my regular saves location to add my backed up file back into my game and the file was empty except for one save game. When I added the files back to the usual location my saves all appeared back in my game just as they had been and I could play them. I'm not sure if that answers your question.