My original saved sims are gone

[Saltypaws]

I know there is a thread on townie sims disappearing, but this is sims that I have played with since I got the game.  One was almost maxed in her job in culinary and the other was just trying to get her last couple of masterpieces before she was maxed out.  They had a daughter and her husband and their child living with them.  I decided to start a whole new game and went back this evening to play the first family and the two maxed out sims were gone.  Daughter, husband and child were still in the house, no nothing in their friends list.  This does not make me happy, especially when I had worked really hard in getting them to where I wanted them to be.  Think I will let sims4 rest for a while, until I cool off.  I can't tell anything from the saved games in the sims4 folder.

[Pam]

Do you have more than one save of that game that you can go back to?

[_Annika_]

Check out the sticky here on understanding the save files. I would recommend backing up your saves folder, and then restoring one file from each slot at a time, and loading each of those until you find the one that you have lost. Hopefully it is in there! You don't have to actually quit the game to do this, either. Just so long as you are at the main menu and not the load menu when you change things in the folder.

[Twinmum]

Not sure if this is relevant or not, but the latest update mentioned fixing instances of disappearing sims. Whether they mean sims becoming invisible or just vanishing like the problem you have. Hope you sort it out though.

Update: 9/24/14

Bug Fixes / Issues:

    Fixed some issues related to error codes 102 and 122--Fixed an issue that prevents loading an auto-saved game directly from the "Load Game" menu.
    Fixed some instances of disappearing Sims.