Simcity Societies Destinations only loads base game

[e2446cb9e67243a9]

Hi, I am playing SimCity Societies Destinations on a Lenovo Ideapad laptop on Windows 10.

I have tried a number of steps (opening game via EA App, opening SCSDestinations.exe directly, etc.) but the Expansion is not recognised by the EA App and does not open.

I can open the base game with no patches (the patches come as part of the Destinations expansion) and open a map without issue, just the aforementioned missing content.

I have tried reinstalling the game and the EA App but this did not work.

I have previously been able to play Destinations on this device (a few months ago) but had to reinstall as the game began crashing to desktop when I revisited it recently. This was preceded by the EA App also requiring reinstallation as it was failing to start.

[e2446cb9e67243a9 · Accepted solution]

Hi All,

For anyone who actually plays SimCity Societies Destinations and is looking for solutions, I did manage to solve this myself.

The EA App installs SimCity Societies in its own folder within EA Games in Program Files. For this issue, the Destinations expansion was installed in a subfolder, SCS Destinations.

THE SOLUTION: What I did was extract the Destinations folder. To play it safe, I cut and pasted the SimCity Societies folder to desktop, and pasted Destinations as its own folder within EA Games. This solves the issue. Make sure to open the SCS Destinations launcher (SimCity Societies, with the old base game icon, located in SCS Destinations\Launcher.

There's a separate issue too, with sound. In some save games only some of the sound channels play, with no music. This leads to a pretty quiet town absent of the normal ambient building, vehicle and sim noise. You just have to quit to main menu and open a new city, exit out of this city, and reload the save. Repeat this process 1-3 or so times until the sound is fully restored. You'll know when the music starts playing as normal on loading the game.

Some people have an issue where the game won't load properly at all, there's just a black screen and it crashes to desktop. I fixed this by deleting the video settings files located in My Documents\SimCity Societies (if in doubt delete the whole folder, but this will delete your saves and profile(s)). If that doesn't work then God help you.

All in all, can't complain, this game is well over 10 years old, and wasn't designed to be compatible with Windows 8, 10 or 11.

[e2446cb9e67243a9 · Accepted solution]

Hi All,

For anyone who actually plays SimCity Societies Destinations and is looking for solutions, I did manage to solve this myself.

The EA App installs SimCity Societies in its own folder within EA Games in Program Files. For this issue, the Destinations expansion was installed in a subfolder, SCS Destinations.

THE SOLUTION: What I did was extract the Destinations folder. To play it safe, I cut and pasted the SimCity Societies folder to desktop, and pasted Destinations as its own folder within EA Games. This solves the issue. Make sure to open the SCS Destinations launcher (SimCity Societies, with the old base game icon, located in SCS Destinations\Launcher.

There's a separate issue too, with sound. In some save games only some of the sound channels play, with no music. This leads to a pretty quiet town absent of the normal ambient building, vehicle and sim noise. You just have to quit to main menu and open a new city, exit out of this city, and reload the save. Repeat this process 1-3 or so times until the sound is fully restored. You'll know when the music starts playing as normal on loading the game.

Some people have an issue where the game won't load properly at all, there's just a black screen and it crashes to desktop. I fixed this by deleting the video settings files located in My Documents\SimCity Societies (if in doubt delete the whole folder, but this will delete your saves and profile(s)). If that doesn't work then God help you.

All in all, can't complain, this game is well over 10 years old, and wasn't designed to be compatible with Windows 8, 10 or 11.

[irrrdc]

Thanks for your detailed solution! However, it's not working for me.

At first, I followed your steps directly, but the game could not launch because the EA App did not recognize the game as installed.

Next, I tried cut+pasting the Destinations folder to the desktop, then using the EA App to re-download and repair the files. After, I pasted Destinations back in as a separate game, in its own folder, and started the program from the Destinations folder launcher. This once again launches Societies without the Destinations expansion

Are there any other steps to your solution that you have not clearly described?

[irrrdc]

I found a different solution that works.

When installing SC Societies and its add-ons from the EA App, the app will first install the base game Societies and then install Destinations immediately after. If you cancel the download of the base game Socieites, the queued download of Destinations will proceed to install the expansion without installing the base game.

[irrrdc]

I tried again a week later and that solution failed.

Now, a month later, the executables associated with Destinations (SCSDestinations.exe and  SCSocietiesLauncher.exe) fail to launch the game at all. They prompt me to restart and update the EA App. After restarting, nothing is changed.