Piracy is all around us these days, ranging from software to video games or movies. But one of the areas most affected by it is PC gaming, where a lot of users tend to pirate their favorite titles in order to escape the ordeal of DRM software, like the infamous SecuROM, or to try it out with full features before deciding to buy the real deal.

One of the most expected and pirated titles in the last few weeks was Electronic Arts' The Sims 3, eagerly anticipated by both regular games and pirates. It was leaked before its official release, but it seems that the company behind it wasn't that upset with the fact, even though unofficial figures showed that more than 180,000 downloads were recorded in a few days.

When asked about how he felt about that, the president of EA, John Riccitiello, jokingly stated that “You identified our secret marketing campaign! That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program.”

Then, he got serious and revealed that because it didn't have all of the features, it merely gave people a taste of the full game, “In the game that was pirated there's only one city out of two and Sims 3 has a massive amount of content, and a lot of it is downloaded once you register with EA and join the online community. So you get that content in addition to the second city which is downloadable for people who register, and that's a major component. A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community, where you are sampling assets created by other people. So for the pirate consumer, they don't get the second town, they don't get all the extra content, and they don't get the community. It was only concentrated on Poland and China, but I think of it as not being that different than a demo.”

He also revealed that the best way to convince pirates to buy the title was to offer them unique experiences once they registered. “I'm a longtime believer that we're moving to selling services that are disc-enabled as opposed to packages that have bolt-ons. If you see what we're doing with Madden Online, FIFA Ultimate Team or Sims 3, and Dragon Age is probably a 100-hour game by itself, but what comes post-release for these games is bigger still. So the point I'm making is, yes I think that's the answer to piracy. And here's the trick: it's not the answer because this foils a pirate, but it's the answer because it makes the service so valuable that in comparison the packaged good is not. So you can only deliver these added services to a consumer you recognize and know.”

Overall, Riccitiello's point of view is a very healthy one, considering that a lot of pirates are only customers that have grown tired of DRM software or just interested in testing out the game and seeing if it is actually worth their hard earned money.