How can we find the bug ourselves? Play the Sims 4 with every available addon and fill all the worlds with random builds from the gallery. No matter what type of lot, but at least a few residential rentals. Important: Please use only builds that were shared after For Rent came out (7th December 2023)
After you've placed a lot of new builds, play for a few days with visiting some of the lots, restart the game, visit again, restart the game and repeat these steps. Then repeat the same with different lots from the gallery.
What happens when the bug occurs? Eventually if you are very unlucky your save will be showing signs of corruption after a while like white loading screens, game crashing, problems with saving the game, weird exlamation signs ect. Why? Because after for Rent came out there was a bug which corrupted a residential lot if changed to another lot type. Although the bug was fixed a while ago, the gallery is still full of potential savebreaking builds that were corrupted by this bug and unknowingly shared. And it doesn't matter what type of lot it is: normal residential lot, park, restaurant, gym ect - if someone bulldozed a former residential rental and build something else on the same lot while the bug was still active, that lot most likely is corrupted. And here's my concern: Every lot on the gallery, that has been shared after 7th December 2023, could be a potential save-breaker, because the bugfix was not working retroactively for already corrupted lots. And there is no way to tell if the lot from the gallery is a corrupted one or not - only time will tell while playing with it, but when you start to notize the corruption it is already too late. So if I want to be safe I can't download anymore builds from the gallery as of 7th December 2023. I'm forever stuck with the "old" gallery before For Rent came out. This is very limiting!
What do you expect to see?
I expect the gallery to be a safe space no matter the date of the upload or the bug situation ingame! If a lot is being shared in a corrupted state due to the 'Stuck on residential rental' bug, the corruption should not outlive the gallery and infect other peoples saves who put the lot in their games. In the current state the gallery is not safe anymore and full of potential gamebreaking builds! This is not fun.
Nachträgliche Worte für den Kasten, wo man noch etwas reinschreiben muss:
The Sims Team has to think of a solution to fix these corrupted lots in the gallery!
I love the gallery and it breaks my heart that from now on I can't use newer builds anymore without risking my 7 year old save file. Browsing the gallery for cool builds was a big part of my game. I used to love getting new worlds and filling them with amazing and creative new builds from the gallery - they gave me so many ideas for my gameplay and stories. But with the current situation I feel very limited because I am stuck with the "old" gallery - everything new would be too risky. And that really would be a shame if the Sims 4 is supposed to run for a few more years. So many cool builds that I and other players would miss out because of that terrible bug.
I really hope that this problem with the gallery can be resolved somehow!
Thank you for reading this long Bug Report. I tried to explain everything as good as possible. If you have further questions, please feel free to ask.