14 DAY TRIAL // With the release date more than a week away, The Sims 3, the biggest game that Electronic Arts will release this summer, has been pirated by more than 100,000 people. The most recent estimates show that close to 200,000 have used or are using file sharing sites to get the pirated version of the videogame before it arrives in stores.
Joe Fleischer, who is the chief of marketing and a co founder of BigChampagne, which is monitoring file sharing traffic, declared that “That’s an impressive number. If people want the content and can download it on the Internet, which is pretty much all content types, they are going to do it.”
Electronic Arts has stated that the version of the game which can be downloaded for free from torrent sites is not complete and that the finished product will have extra features and more towns for players to simulate living. But it seems that this has not deterred gamers who are hungry to experience the latest product coming from the Maxis team led by Will Wright.
Another Will Wright created game, Spore, became, by some estimates, the most pirated videogame of 2008, after a lot of players were annoyed to find that the title had draconian Digital Rights Management measures that limited the number of installs and generally seemed to hurt legitimate customers more than pirates.
Electronic Arts made a 180-degree turn and decided to release The Sims 3 without any DRM but apparently this has not reduced the number of people interested in pirating the game. Still, Electronic Arts is sure to release more content for The Sims 3, probably via the EA Downloader bundled with the game, and pirates are likely to miss out on all that extra content. This might even lead some of those who have illegally downloaded the game and liked it to go out and buy a legitimate copy once it is released.