Maxis says longer startup loading is by design
If your Sims 4 main menu has been taking noticeably longer to appear since the July 21st update, you are not imagining things. Maxis has confirmed that the slower initial load is intentional, a direct result of the Memory Boost feature now enabled for all players.
A player named mmartinsdemoura filed a report on EA Help noting that the game used to reach the main menu in 10 to 15 seconds but now takes over a minute. The post received 500 upvotes from others experiencing the same thing.
The Sims Direct Team responded with an official explanation: the game now "front-loads" all of its heavy Python initialization before the main menu appears, rather than spreading that work across gameplay transitions. The trade-off is a longer wait at startup in exchange for shorter loading screens when you travel between lots, worlds, and zones during actual play.
From the team's statement on EA Help:
We've changed where and when the game loads its core data. While getting to the Main Menu will now take a bit longer when you first launch the game, your loading screens once you are actively playing (like traveling between lots) will be noticeably shorter.
Maxis says the initial boot should not exceed 1 to 2 minutes on unmodded saves. If yours does, they want to hear about it in the official EA Help thread.
The mod and CC problem
For vanilla players, the change might be an acceptable bargain. For players running large mod folders and CC libraries, the picture looks different.
EA Help user Boldenbeau described the disparity bluntly: some modded setups that previously loaded in around 20 minutes are now reportedly stretching past an hour. Their argument is that front-loading all asset initialization hits hardest on the players with the most content to parse, and that the game's asset-loading pipeline was not optimized for that scenario before the change shipped.
This is where the "Memory Boost" framing starts to feel more like what Sims Community called a "Memory Borrow." The in-game performance gains come at the cost of a heavier upfront toll, and for players whose mod folders already pushed the engine, that toll may outweigh the benefit.
What Memory Boost is supposed to improve
When Memory Boost rolled out with the July update, Maxis listed several expected benefits:
- Improved memory management during gameplay
- Reduced lag and performance slowdowns
- Improved frame rates and responsiveness
- Greater stability during extended play sessions
- Reduced risk of memory-related crashes
- Reduced loading times (between lots, not at startup)
A hotfix arriving on August 6 addresses a memory crash when traveling, a save-slot overwrite bug, and stuck career countdowns, suggesting the team is still ironing out issues from these underlying changes.
What to do if your load time exceeds two minutes
If you are on an unmodded save and consistently waiting more than two minutes at the initial loading screen, report it in the EA Help thread so the team can investigate. For modded players, there is no official guidance yet beyond acknowledging that the front-loading behavior affects heavy mod setups disproportionately.
The change itself is not something players can toggle off. Memory Boost is on for everyone as of the July 21st patch, and the loading behavior is baked into how the game now initializes.
Source: Sims Community