No game is ever perfect -- some may seem perfect because the studio that created them did a lot of bug-stomping in the beta testing phase, but none of them are perfect, and it seems that The Sims FreePlay has more than its fair share of bugs... Here are some you need to be aware of so that you avoid triggering them:
(1) The Sims Store Access Failure
If you open the Sims Store (the purple button for spending real money) then select a purchase and then cancel it more than once there is a chance that you will be locked out of the store and no longer able to access it, so do not do that.
(2) Your Sims refuse to use items you have bought and placed in their home / there is a goal to use item X but your Sim will not use it.
What is happening here is that there is a pathing issue with the item and where you have placed it, and your Sim does not believe that they can actually access it, which is why they do nothing when you try to get them to use it. Place the item in another location.
(3) Sims trapped in the lake.
The lake in the park can be buggy if you have your Sim enter the water near the edges so make sure to enter via the center to prevent them from being trapped in the water. Once they are trapped there does not seem to be a way to get them out save for resetting the game and losing all of your progress.
(4) Your Cup Runneth Over
One of the biggest bugs in the game is that it will allow you to do things that are to your detriment. For instance you can have each of your 16 Sims purchase a pet, but of you do that later when you get the goal to purchase a pet, you cannot. There is no easy fix for that, so you should really be conservative in buying all of the stuff for every Sim.
(5) Playing with Time
Some websites and hint sites suggest that the fastest way to make progress in the game is to set your Sims to long hour tasks and then quit the game, access your iPad configuration menu, and set the time forward however many hours you need to in order to complete the task. They suggest that you can simply rinse and repeat to great success, but that may not be true. There have been wide reports that using this tactic works, but that it can blow up in your face if you accidentally access either of the stores, which appear to verify their time with the FreePlay server. Game lockups, save corruption, and loss of contents have been reported.
For that reason we do not recommend that you use this tactic for play.
