I haven't updated my Origin client since March, back when people said that updating origin had ruined their games. I remember getting the UC patch back then to remove SECURom but I have not updated my origin client for a long time since I only use it to play Ultimate Collection. If I update my client will it ruin my game's downloads and save files? Main topic in question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/origin/com..._update_ruined/

I have my downloads folder backed up on USB but I don't wanna lose one of my favoured neighbourhood files that I've built up on a lot.

If you do update, it shouldn't break any files - but with EA/Origin you never know since they tend to break about as many things as they fix. They may decide to do an auto update on your game too. While saved files should in theory be safe, files in the Install folder probably aren't safe at all.

General rule of "how to avoid having to fix things if you don't have to" is "If it works, don't fix it".
Personally I use the "play offline" version for my UC, and haven't bothered updating Origin for a while. Unless you play TS4 or TS3 too and want the updates, it's not absolutely necessary.

You can (and probably should) back up the entire TS2 folder in Documents with neighborhoods and all if you don't want to risk losing them - that's usually what I do, anyway. Then you get the entire saved game, with all the files you need. You don't need to backup your Install folders (unless you've edited files or put in modded files like the GraphicRules, light files, zCEP or similar - and then you just have to save those particular files and the location, since it saves you from having to relocate and edit them again).

I haven't updated since I installed it on my current machine... sometime in 2014. Mine is fine. At that time Origin was not required to run the game, so I still don't use it.

Since I play Sims 4 too and need to keep it up to date I've let Origin to update multiple times and it has never touched my Sims 2 UC installation. That said, I have Origin set up to never automatically update anything, instead it'll tell me there's update and I'll manually choose to install it. But I also never start Sims 2 through Origin and instead use a noCD patch though, I'm not sure if that matters anything.

I just opened Origin the other day to run TS4, and it did mess up my TS2. I had to repair files to get it to work again.

How can you run UC without the need to start up origin? it's real annoying having to sign in to it just to play. I prefer running it on steam but ever since SECURom was removed, I now have to startup origin just to play it

How did it do so?