You’d be forgiven for thinking that EA has forgotten about The Sims 3. It’s been 16 years since launch, and The Sims 4 has been the clear focus for the past few years. Until now, anyway. A surprise update for The Sims 3 just came out of nowhere, solving a longstanding problem for many players and igniting theories as to what could happen next.
According to a post from user ‘puzzlezaddict’ on the EA Answers HQ, the new The Sims 3 patch from Monday, January 13 fixes the Alder Lake problem. Alder Lake is the codename given to Intel’s 12th generation of core processors, and for many players with the hardware, the life game simply doesn’t work. Sims player ‘LazyDuchess’ created a fan-made patch to get around the Alder Lake issue, but that hasn’t worked for everyone.
Now, a new update appears to fix the Alder Lake problem, but not for every version of the game. According to puzzlezaddict, the EA App version of The Sims 3 – and not the disc or Steam versions – has been updated and now works. You just need to go to the activation window, click exit, and launch the game again.
This news around the The Sims 3 couldn’t have come at a better time. EA has just announced a special episode of the community series Behind the Sims for Tuesday January 14, which aims to celebrate the last 25 years of the series. Many players are guessing that we could get some sort of major update to The Sims 3, but there’s no telling what it could contain just yet. I’ll be sure to update this article if we learn anything new.
Others are guessing that we might finally get a full 64-bit version of The Sims 3 for Windows. Players on Mac have been able to play The Sims 3 64-bit for a few years, as Apple announced it was phasing out 32-bit applications (which is what The Sims 3 is) so EA updated that version of the game. As for a similar version for Windows, EA said at the time “There are no current plans to update the Windows PC version of The Sims 3.”
With this latest Behind The Sims presentation celebrating 25 years of the series, I’d be surprised if we don’t get something new related to the older games in the franchise. We’ll just have to wait and see.
We’ve also got all the best simulation games and best relaxing games you can play on PC today, if you want even more.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.