Running El Capitan on a Mac with NVIDIA graphics and can’t play Sims 4?

Published on by BluebellFlora3 Comments

Then contact EA, post on the forums and make a noise. Most Macs with NVIDIA GPUs still cannot play the Sims 4 since updating to El Capitan due to an issue with the game not liking NVIDIA. This affects Mac with the following graphics cards, according to reports over on the official forum:

  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 512 MB
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 512 MB
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1024 MB
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 1024 MB
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 775M 1024 MB

El Capitan was released on the 30th September 2015. Reports started being posted pretty much straight away that the game was unplayable whereas before the OS upgrade it had been working fine. Can you believe that this problem still hasn’t been fixed, 5 months later? No, I’m not particularly surprised either. Anyone remember the almighty mess that EA managed to not bother with when Lion was released? Or how about the other NVIDIA issue that took them forever to fix?

SimGuruJanitor, who had already popped up on the stickied thread on the official game forum, gallantly informed us that a December patch would “address many of these issues”:

SGJanitor

See what he did there? He pretty much blamed Apple for the game not working. Isn’t that the nice, easy way out? Plenty of software engineers and developers manage to keep up with Apple and support their latest OS offerings but not EA. It is irritating that graphics updates come through Apple in OS updates but that’s the way it works and EA know that.

He then disappeared, never to be heard from again. He’s been tagged but never responded. It’s now the 2nd March and the game is still unplayable.

New Sims 3 update for Mac users

Published on by BluebellFlora30 Comments

Only applicable to the 32-bit version of the Sims 3

EA have today made an update available for Mac users experiencing problems with the Sims 3. This hasn’t been released as a normal patch through the Launcher but as an update to Origin. They haven’t confirmed exactly what it fixes, only that it should “help with compatibility and stability issues”. Hopefully this means that all those with post-2013 Macs who have graphics cards which are not supported will now be able to play. The affected Macs are all listed here together with the workaround that some have managed to get working (hopefully that workaround won’t be necessary now).

The Origin update can be found here – https://eaassets-a.akamaihd.net/Origin-Client-Download/origin/forum/34349/Origin.dmg

Download it and give it a go. It may be a good idea to run the Origin reset tool first before you install it, I did. Bear in mind that this download is not the one you get if you download from the Origin website, this is a specific one that EA have released and provided the link for over at AHQ. After using it your Origin version should be 9.11.6.18959. My game certainly seems to be launching more quickly and quitting instantly rather than taking its time as it did before when I clicked on Quit Game. If you’re using the disc version of the game you will need to start running the digital version from Origin in order for this update to take effect. Full instructions here on how to do this (but you need to download Origin from the above link, not the one in the help page!).

Please, please, please take the time to post on the thread over on the official forums here, over on the stickied thread in the Mac section of AHQ here, or leave me a comment below. All feedback is really useful, good or bad.

This update is long overdue, I really hope it helps those who haven’t managed to play their games in years.

The Sims official games forum gets spammed – for 8 hours

Published on by BluebellFlora1 Comment

Hello? Is there anyone there?

The Sims official games forums are being mercilessly spammed at the moment by some lovely Korean bots by the look of it. It started at 11:21am, GMT, and has continued throughout the day:

spambots

The last one is showing as 6:58pm, GMT:

spambots2

There’s nearly 23 pages of this stuff. Do they not have anyone monitoring the forums at the weekend? Do they realise that the whole world is not in the same time zone as Redwood City? Did they all sleep through their alarms? Has everyone lost their keys to the office?

Because it looks like complete and utter fail from where I am.