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EA: Pirated versions of Sims 3 are a demo
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 23rd June 2009
EA boss John Riccitiello claims that pirated versions of The Sims 3 are really more of a demo than anything else.
In fact though, according to Electronic Arts boss John Riccitiello, the pirated version of The Sims 3 has actually worked in the publisher's favour - and certainly didn't prevent it from hitting the top of the sales charts.
"That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program," Riccitiello jokingly said in an interview with IndustryGamers.
Riccitiello goes on to point out that, since the pirated version cannot be registered with the EA servers and isn't fully content-complete, it's actually more like shareware than a legitimate threat to sales.
"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," he elaborated.
"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."
There are obviously a few things wrong with that idea and we get the feeling that Riccitiello is only being half-serious, but it's still nice the publisher stay positive, isn't it? Check out our Sims 3 PC review for more information and let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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I was fully expecting a "Our sales were negatively affected" stance.
Hats off to the guy.
Except for the popup at the start that says something along the lines of getting a new city if you register a legitimate copy of the game.
But yeah, at least EA are staying strong.
the massive amount of content that you have to buy from the ridiculously overpriced online store you mean.... the same content that is also available on torrent from all over the place so people can get hold of it regardless.
while he's right that the initial leak wasn't the final release of the game, i doubt the more recent pirated copies doing the rounds are this early version.
i also suspect that a lot of people are going to be pirating this extra content as it really is exhorbitantly priced relatively speaking
they believe the average soccer mom ehh sorry sims player is too stupid to fidn the full version for free
Seriously though, Sims have a different target audience than most games, one that doesn't really know all that much about computers, so they most likely just shrug off the couple pirated copies and just cash in on the non gamer market.
Yeah right, hes just proud of his horrible 'internet required' DRM techniques...
But Yeah right Riccitiello! Common sense tells me from playing Sims 2 is that you can download the game and extra content with out ever using their server. In Sims2 you saved the "Extra Content" file when you had to backup or reinstall the game. So, I imagine that some ZipperHead out there zipped up that content and put it up on a torrent.
but it doesnt matter what the truth is, all that matters is these days you can manufacture to truth to what you want people to believe.
I'm not a Sims fan, so I don't really care.
Not that I really care, but if an EA exec learns that demo's are good...thats a step in the right direction