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Sims 3 Piracy Rate Outpacing Spore’s
The amount of users downloading The Sims 3 from torrent sites indicates that the title’s long-term piracy rate could top that of Spore, the most pirated title of 2008.
The EA PC title, which isn’t due for release until June 2 in the States, was leaked to torrent sites two weeks ahead of its planned launch. And according to BigChampagne, a company that monitors file sharing, it was downloaded at least 180,000 times between May 18 and May 21.
That figure outpaces the 400,000 illegal downloads of Spore over three weeks, reports Bloomberg, presumably referring to the period leading up to the title's release last year. Spore went on to be illegally downloaded some 1.7 million times during the last three months of 2008.
An EA spokesperson said that “the pirated version [of The Sims 3] is a buggy, pre-final build of the game… Half the world - an entire city - is missing from the pirated copy.”
The report estimates that the current number of illegal Sims 3 downloads suggests lost retail sales of $9 million.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
this has to be down to the current global economic crisis. If you have little spare cash and a window opens to get product for free, a lot of people will grab it. The best thing EA can do is look carefully at their game pricing to stem the flood.
Not that the argument ever sounded valid to begin with, but it just goes to show that people pirate whatever's popular, and the claim that the only reason Spore was so heavily pirated was due to the restrictive DRM was nonsense.
It's weird, the people who are most likely to buy and play The Sims i would have thought would be the games players least tech savvy and thus least likey to pirate.
"core" gamers play it too but you don't admit it to otherwise you're a gay or a girl and of course pirating these sort of games makes it cooler too.
there is alot of girls in pc gaming :( you know girls like to play house. It use to be only tech savvy guys :(
http://www.vg247.com/2009/04/08/women-make-up-462-of-pc-gaming-says-niel...
It's a crying shame, really. At least the game isn't perfect for the torrent users.
If game devs want to fight pircay in a big way. Games need to go online, take a look at guildwars and battlenet. Games need to go online now. Online games are harder to pirate and if you easly take down pirates who make online gaming tsite for onlive play with pirated games.
You also have too watch for pirates who are in their own backyard. I willing to bet that pircating is such a good busniess on consoles that there is people who work for companies like EA from the inside to pirate games.
You don't have to guess, this is a pre-release copy; so of course it's internal.
Although pircay is, in fact, not good busniess for consoles; or anything else for that matter. Software Pirates, or pircationists, don't give thousands of dollars away a dev' in exchange for a game. For-profit piracy - pircaynalingus, is made up of low-income, shady individuals trying to make easy money. They're aren't incorporated.
They'll just buy the game when it comes out, & burn it a billion times.
edit: What do consoles have to do with the Sims 3? I thought it was a PC exclusive.
you always hear pcgaming piracay when consoles is bigger. the last numbers for console pircay was in 2007. I think hardware companies realise just how smart pc gamers are so they don't give out numbers no more. The wii and dsi is well into the billions.
True enough, but they're not talking about the whole. They're comparing this to Spore; which was the Number 1 downloaded game on any platform. That's why they're not talking about consoles; because PC-Spore beat 'em all out. The Sims is a huge franchise, but taking the game online turned out to an epic failure.
EA's sort've between a rock & a "hard place" on this one.
you have a good point, It will sell well for a long time to come. Yea I hear you, any game with big name game devs will be a target. I think that EA shold look to anet and battlenet for exmpales.
the game will sell very well I am sure of it. Will wrights games aare huge. As for the pircay it's funny we have not gotten any consoles numbers these days. I mean nintendo did get 1 billion vs pc gaming spore not even close and that was 2007.
I guess EA had better hope that it's a really kick ass city.