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The Sims 3 Racks Up Over 180,000 Downloads Prior To Release
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.'"
Ill just wait and pirate the full copy when it comes out then. Thanks for the heads up EA i wouldnt wanna pirate a substandard version.
So guys, you kept saying everyone pirates because of DRM. Well, this doesnt have one now. What excuse should we use now?
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.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
I'm downloading it so that EA feel compelled to put the DRM back in for the expansion packs. I will then start a campaign to boycott DRM laden games which will be so popular that no one will buy any of the $ims 3 expansion packs thereby killing the franchise once and for all.
"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?
Sadly, the only thing that will ever kill the Sims is somebody making a better Sims-type game. That or putting them in a swimming pool and removing the ladders.
Actually, the original release (referred to in TFS, which was beta code) was propered earlier this week - the "current" pirated release is the RTM code.
Speak for yourself.
My steam account has about $1,000 worth of games and yet most are not online games that I could have pirated.
Thing is, it's easier for me to get them on steam than it is to pirate them. I don't want to deal with cracks, patches, recracks, etc. Paying the $30-40 for a game on steam is worth it just for the fact that I can download it again in a few months or years when I get the itch to play it again.
The problem with your logic and that of most publishes is that you are trying to prevent a pirated copy from working. This is silly. What they should be trying to do is give incentives to buy a legitimate copy. A few free downloadable content packs that would require online registration is all that's needed to make a number of customers out of pirates. It works for Stardock.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
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.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
A few free downloadable content packs that would require online registration is all that's needed to make a number of customers out of pirates. It works for Stardock.
Actually, EA is doing exactly this with The Sims 3. When you register your game as legitly bought you get 1000 free points to download more stuff from their item store. So you get the free downloadable content there aswell.
My wife likes to make me and her in the game and then make them have like eight children together...
This is my life.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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.
Can you kill your family? Can you fuck your dog? Can you construct an atomic bomb and detonate it?
Not really. but the sims 2 did allow for a lot entertaining sadism. In all honesty, comparing it to an RPG is going a bit too far. I like to think of it as a micro-management less-god-game, where you don't really have a lot of freedom (because you're stuck with the "dialogue" options/careers/whatnot the programmers made for you), but it has a lot of a meta-game aspect to it.
A woman I once dated for a while really enjoyed the sims 2. She probably had a dozen or so families in her own little town, with meticulously designed houses and carefully balanced schedules heading for that maximum on the career ladder. She was quite the control freak when it came to the game, making sure that most sims stayed the same age as other sims, so she would switch families every time she played for a while. At some point I found myself alone at home with her laptop and the irresistable urge to introduce a little chaos into that perfectly ordered world.
After taking a backup of the savegames I created a character named Eugene Frankensausage, carefully crafted to be a bald bearded fat man wearing worn out jeans and what looked to be a dirty shirt. His house was a concrete square block adorned only by the mailbox in front of it and a single pink flamingo ornament in the yard. In the first few hours he got to know the neighbours, had sex with them which resulted in a fight, asked one of them to move in, then set the house on fire. This unfortunate process repeated itself quite a few times until he finally learned how to cook at which point the game became a lot more dull. By the end of a boring evening the neatly and carefully organized world had a lot of separated families, widowers, and people generally being in distress. There were also 3 people maneuvering through a small labyrinth in the yard with the end point being aforementioned pink flamingo lawn ornament.
Now, waiting for her to discover that Eugene Frankensausage had moved into town and not mentioning you had a backup, that was the fun part.
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.
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