EA: Pirated versions of Sims 3 are a demo

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 23rd June 2009

EA boss John Riccitiello claims that pirated versions of The Sims 3 are really more of a demo than anything else.

When pirated versions of The Sims 3 were leaked online a full week before the game was even available to buy, you'd imagine that sales would be hugely affected and that Electronic Arts would be pretty annoyed.

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.