The Sims 3 Racks Up Over 180,000 Downloads Prior To Release 187
Bloomberg reports that pirated versions of EA's The Sims 3 were downloaded over 180,000 times between May 18 and May 21. The game will not be officially released until June 2nd, and it does not make use of SecuROM for DRM. Quoting:
"That outpaces the 400,000 downloads over three weeks for Electronic Arts' Spore, the most-pirated game of 2008. ... Copies of the game available on file-sharing Web sites aren't the full version, Electronic Arts said. 'The pirated version is a buggy, pre-final build of the game,' Holly Rockwood, a company spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. 'It's not the full game. Half the world — an entire city — is missing from the pirated copy.'"
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
So guys, you kept saying everyone pirates because of DRM. Well, this doesnt have one now. What excuse should we use now?
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok. Let me try this excuse:
"I pirated it because I couldn't buy it anywhere."
There. Done. I'm sure a number of people who pirated will end up buying a real copy once it's released so they can get the online content. But right now if you're itching to play the sims 3 or just see what it's like, you have no other options but to wait or pirate. Most people are quite impatient to say the least.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I pirated it because I couldn't buy it anywhere."
Boohoo, god forbid that anybody have to wait a few days for something any more. Seriously, unless you are terminally ill and will likely to die before the official street date, why can't you wait. Don't you have anything better to do?
Let's be honest... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It just goes to show... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, so you mean version 4 has higher system requirements than version 2? Oh the horror!
There were memory leak issues early on with Civ4, but they got fixed up pretty well with patches.
Re:Let's be honest... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know....I don't understand its popularity either....
It's popular with women (of all ages). To understand it's popularity you would have to under stand women, and quite frankly trying to understand women is all but impossible. I think we are doomed to never know.
Re:Let's be honest... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an RPG without the geekyness.
There. Get it now?
You make a sim, you lvl up your skills, you progress in your job, you get quests, you group with others. In the end you die and make a new character. Repeat.
It's an RPG. You do understand why people like RPGs right?
A lot of people claim that sims is a "time managment" game. That's simply not true, managing your time is just the backdrop for the main goal of character advancment.
Oh and guess what, Sims 3 is an amazing RPG in that it's completley open ended. You make your own story, do your own thing. You can play the entire game without ever getting a job, looting other peoples trash for money and sleeping in their homes. Or you can play a typical recluse and never leave the house, chat online for all social interaction and hack for money.
If you don't see what the appeal is of a game that lets you do whatever you want, I'm not sure I can help you.
Re:This actually hurt EA this time (Score:3, Insightful)
so they played a pre-release incomplete version with half the content missing, and bitched that it was no good.
*sigh*...
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
This episode shows that pirates get to the game before your average consumer can touch it, meaning that there's a break in the production pipeline inside EA.
Their problem is their employees, contractors and distributors, not their customers.
Put another way: EA's biggest problem is EA. And all the DRM in the world (or none of it, for that matter) can change that.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ill just wait then (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm so it sounds like they released/leaked what amounts to a demo, maybe company's could start getting back into the habit of releasing _realistic_, _representative_ demos of games. It would be nice, then I wouldn't need to get a pirated copy just too try and see if it sucks (which it usually does).
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The old argument was that people pirated because of DRM
Nice straw man, but the real argument is that people who would otherwise have bought legitimate copies pirate because of DRM. Other people would have either pirated or gone without. When making financial decisions, you should ignore these people because nothing you will do will make them pay for your product. Punishing the people who want to buy the legitimate version with DRM does not make people who, as you put it, are just dicks, into customers.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. I grabbed the final 3 expansions for sims 2 off torrents, tried them out, and promptly deleted them. I learned my lesson after the final sims 1 expansion...
The final expansion in particular. They took the demo concept of sims 3 (apartments, playing your sims while other families are active), tacked on the half assed magic stuff from sims 1, and called it an expansion.
The sims series is interesting and has a lot of potential, but it's really damn obvious the EA execs treat it as nothing more than a cash bag.
Need more money? Have a modeler modify 6 of the existing models to have some different angles, have a texture artist create a basic texture like duckies on blue background and use it for everything, and sell it for $19.99 as a stuff pack. Bonus if they can get some big name furniture maker to pay them to tag a name into the descriptions of the new models.
Reviews are bullshit. Demos are haven't been worth trying, if you can find one, since the fucking 90s. And game companies will tack a $20 price sticker on every 5 minutes of work they can get away with.
My money is precious to me, it provides a roof, clothes, and food to my little girl. I sure as hell am not going to toss it at EA every time one of their artists takes a day to make new textures. I download when needed to make informed decisions about where my limited budget is going to be spent.
And no, I'm not one of those 180k downloaders. Making the decision based off half a game is pretty damn worthless and a waste of bandwidth. I won't need to anyway, a friend of mine is planning on buying it when it comes out, so I can try it at his place this time around, just like he tried 1 and 2 at my place when they came out.