basemental

About the April Fools' Prank

Added 2025-04-02 09:23:05 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone,

As many of you noticed, April 1st came and went—and with it, my annual April Fools' prank. This has been a tradition since 2017, and every year I try to do something lighthearted to bring a little humor into the game for just one day.

This year, I made a point to keep it extra mild and non-intrusive. I spent a good amount of time making sure the prank:
A) Only triggered on April 1st and automatically disabled itself any other day.
B) Didn’t interfere with vital game elements like toilets, doors, or other necessities. (I figured we could all live without a TV for a day!)
C) Was super easy to disable in-game—just dial a number, meet a guy who says “April Fools, haha,” and boom, it's done.

That was the plan. Unfortunately, I overlooked one really important detail: I forgot to test it with missing packs installed. This led to a critical bug for some players, and I want to sincerely apologize for that oversight.

I went to bed after release thinking I’d nailed it—a harmless, optional bit of fun. But I woke up to a flood of error reports. As soon as I saw what was going on, I dropped everything, tracked down the issue, and pushed out hotfixes for both the Patreon and Public versions right away. The broken version was only live for a few hours before being patched.

I'm really sorry for the bug—it stressed me out big time. These kinds of things are never intentional, and while they happen from time to time, the most important thing is that they’re identified and fixed immediately. The response to the prank this year has been, as usual, a mix—plenty of laughs and smiles, but also some who weren’t too thrilled. If you’re among the latter group, I get it, and I’m truly sorry if it frustrated you. But please remember: it’s just one silly prank, on one silly day, and it’s always meant in good fun.

Thanks for sticking with me, for laughing along (or forgiving me), and for continuing to support what I do. There’s a lot of awesome stuff ahead, and I can’t wait to share it with you all. Stay safe, stay kind—and I hope your Sims have recovered from their temporary TV withdrawal. 💙 – Base