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While EA may be backing off the practice of using invasive DRM in its games, piracy continues. The newest casualty? Sims 3 has leaked to the torrent sites two weeks before the game's release.
By Ben Kuchera | Last updated May 18, 2009 10:15 AM CT


EA is no stranger to piracy trouble. Spore was leaked online before the game's retail release, and ironically the DRM the game shipped with to stop piracy caused a huge backlash with gamers, leading to Amazon getting review-bombed. Well buckle up: it looks as is if Sims 3 is the latest game to be leaked.

You can't really verify this news directly without... you know.... breaking the law, so we can't say for sure if the files are real. We're also not going to point you in any particular direction. What we can say is that a torrent claiming to be the game has popped up in a number of places, with downloaders reporting that the game is working fine.
The release notes on the torrent gives pirates instructions, and a stern moral warning: "Be sure to have a firewall prevent the launcher and main game from going online," it warns. "Support the software developers. If you like this game, BUY IT!"

This is bad news for EA as the game is still two weeks away from release. The game also doesn't require online activation to play. "The game will have disc-based copy protection—there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed," EA said on the official site. "We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future."

Ars contacted EA for comment, but has yet to hear back—which is not all that surprising. "Yes, the file is real?" ACE Team recently had some success talking directly to pirates and asking them to buy the game instead of pirating it, but EA can have something of a tin ear when it comes to listening to what gamers want.

At the Game Developers Conference this year Microsoft announced technology that would require games such as Sims 3 to be activated once online before the game would work, allowing publishers to control the spread of a game even if street date were to be broken. It's unclear how effective that sort of technology would be in the wild, but with pirates playing Sims 3 right now, it doesn't look as if the serial code included was much of a deterrent.

In an amusing twist, while the torrent appears to be a popular download, many pirates are claiming the game is for their girlfriends, not themselves.

Link:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/05/sims-3-leaked-to-torrent-sites-weeks-before-retail-release.ars