Tag Archives: the sims 3

180,000 pirates sail the seas for The Sims 3… in just 3 days!

Electronic Arts aren’t going to be in the best frame of mind at the moment.

The Register today posted that according to P2P download counting firm, BigChampagne (yes, I’m a little confused about the name too), The Sims 3 has been downloaded 180,000 times in just 3 days (May 18th-May 21st) by means of file sharing sites.

Now I’ve just been doing a few little calculations here. Say every single one of those 180,000 people bought a copy of The Sims 3 legally, and each copy cost £39.99. The total cost of those 180,000 copies comes to £7,198,200. That means that EA has lost just over £7 million in just 3 days.

It does make you wonder a little bit about how bad piracy is.

And then you have to think about who uploaded the file in the first place. Somebody has to – it doesn’t just magically appear. It would have had to have been someone related to EA in some way. The general public can’t get copies of The Sims 3 until June 5th, so something has gone wrong there.

As I have mentioned many times on GEEK!, I don’t like to get involved with piracy. I will certainly be getting my copy of The Sims 3 legally – besides I want a physical copy of the disc and box (I’m that kinda sad guy who likes to have the original box and discs – I still have my Sims Deluxe Edition and Sims 2 discs in their original box).

If you are going to wait for the legal copy, then its in stores on June 5th.

The Sims 3 leaked online 2 weeks before public release

It looks like EA haven’t won the piracy battle yet (will they ever?).

The Sims 3 has been found on public P2P sites just two weeks before the public release of The Sims 3. It can now be downloaded and played on, however this is illegal and GEEK! does not encourage you to do so.

Electronic Arts, the owner of The Sims 3, has previously tried and failed to stop piracy when it launched its last Maxis game – Spore. This was also leaked on to P2P sites before release.

The Sims 3 is currently due for launch on June 5th in the United Kingdom, but it looks as if many people may already have a copy thanks to the online torrent.

It’s a sad time for the game industry at the moment – too many profits are being lost thanks to P2P sites. The gaming industry needs to learn to work with P2P, because it’s totally obvious that the gaming industry will never win against P2P. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em…