Huge Sims Update February 3, 2026: Your Mods Will Break
How to Prepare and Protect Your Game: Information Dump
The February 3rd update is focused on family relationships in particular, in preparation for EA's upcoming Royalty and Legacy expansion pack:

You need to carefully prepare for this update in order to protect your current mods, cc, and saves.
- Backup your saves folder. Always a good plan when there is an update. On Mac, the saves folder is located at /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/saves. On Windows, the locations is C:\Users\\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves.
- Also back up your in-game screenshots and videos: /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Screenshots and /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Recorded Videos on Mac; C:\Users\\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Recorded Videos and C:\Users\\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Screenshots on Windows.
- And your Tray. /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Tray on Mac and C:\Users\\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Tray on Windows.
- Those steps are always good practice for EA updates. Now, there are extra protective steps for this unusual update, since it changes everything to do with family relationships and genealogy. Specifically: remove and back up your Mods folder: /Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods and C:\Users\\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Mods. Simply remove it from your Sims folder so that your mods will remain uncorrupted, and will not affect your gameplay at all. More information by modders (which I'm not, I'm only an experienced player) and EA themselves:
- https://www.patreon.com/posts/149604293
- https://www.patreon.com/posts/heads-up-patch-149752897
- https://www.patreon.com/posts/january-mod-and-149497595/
- https://forums.ea.com/blog/the-sims-game-info-hub-en/the-sims-4-code-changes-for-modders—feb-3rd-base-game-update/13120743

Ways to check your mods to see if they work with the new update afterwards/to see if they have been updated to work:

More posts about The Sims at There Might Be Cupcakes, including my ongoing story Intentional Ink

