Sims 3 leaked to torrent sites

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#1

I just posted the article Sims 3 leaked to torrent sites.

Two weeks ahead of The Sims 3’s official release, the life simulation game has leaked to BitTorrent sites.

Ars Technica, which reported the leak, won’t link to the sites where it found the games…

Read the full article here:  [http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/15956-Sims-3-leaked-to-torrent-sites.html](http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/15956-Sims-3-leaked-to-torrent-sites.html)

Feel free to add your comments below. 

Please note that the reactions from the complete site will be synched below.
#2

Although I’m sure EA do not see the humor in this, it is amusing for the rest of us. If you think of it as a marketing point of view, it could either be a catastrophe or a success. I for one have only heard about the release of Sims 3 via my friends. I have not seen any advertising of such and if someone hadn’t brought up the topic one day at school I still would have had no idea and its only 2 weeks before the release. The leak of the game and the news of its leak will be great advertising for the game, if only EA could get the leak under control and remove it as best as they can.

I personally have not downloaded the game (and nor will I as I lost amusement in The Sims about 3 years ago) but I know a few people who have. My friends who have it are so addicted to The Sims (they would easily have every expansion pack for both 1&2) they will still go out and buy a copy, if not for the sake of actually having a sense of worth by being able to physically touch the game, for the other features that would be included on the disk but not in the leaked version.

If EA grew some brains and really wanted to try to stop the illegal distribution of their games all they have to do is add an online component (maybe such as being able to download more furniture or clothes, and releasing a new object every month). This way they could easily track the illegal keys and cracks. It would also stop illegal versions of the game being able to access this online component, hence loosing some of the gameplay. People may then go out and buy it, if they enjoyed it. I am sorry if this has already been in place as I have never played Sims 2, just Sims 1.

It is also worth noting that the effect of the leak will be lessened by the fact that thousands of people have already pre-ordered the game.

  • Smartest.
#3

I saw the scene release from RELOADED in some release sites.
There’s no real way to stop games from being pirated. They already used various kinds of online activation and other kinds of DRM but none of these were successful.
I don’t think that adding some online component would help to reduce piracy significantly (IIRC Spore had some online thingy in it?).
Also, in some countries, paying something like 50$ for a game is a bit too much, even if you like the game. And the game may not be available at all in some places of the world.

#4

Who would download a game off of a torrent or anyother site? That is like playing russian roulet. Anytime you run an executable, especially from a torrent or like place, more than likely some moron injected a virus, trojan, or worm in the executable file or files.

#5

There is almost no risk involved in DLing something from BitTorrent. People go for the highest number of seeds and that alone is generally equal to working and virus free torrent.

#6

Reading comments before you download anything seems to make the process pretty much safe, but not 100% of course. I agree that there is always a risk, but not to the extend you describe here.

#7

You can always keep a separate drive (and image) on hand for testing out anything you download before unleashing it on your main system (after all, smaller HDDs are dirt cheap these days).

If they want to lower piracy, they should drop DRM/copy protection (because we’ve all seen how that crap keeps people from pirating), and LOWER PRICES. Sims is interesting, maybe for $10 or 15, but that’s all it’s worth. I got my GF the Sims Deluxe (Sims 1 with all expansions) for like $20 and she lost interest in it in just a couple of days.

#8

You (shaolin007) are dead wrong.

#9

I am dead wrong how? LOL. Being a programmer, new viruses won’t show up on your virus scanners right away people. Just because no one hasn’t “detected” malicious code, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I remember back in the day, my brother downloaded a game and scanned it, nothing came up. However, about 6 months later, went to go play that game again and scanned it for shits and giggles and whala virus! So like I said, you are playing russian roulet.

#10

If you really wanted to pirate a game and test it out but still isn’t any guarantee, you could install the game in a virtual machine and see what happens.

#12

@ steven_jones

My, what a potty mouth. Welcome to an adult conversation, Steve.

@ shaolin007

That’s why I have anti-virus/anti-spyware software installed. I rarely have a problem. For me, it’s worth the risk when PC games are $60 a pop.

#13

Any form of DRM is not only a manufactures additional expense but a waste of time for there is always hackers out there who take on the challenge to not only break but publish how the broke it. Years ago I was an owner of an Apple II +. Game producers were always coming up with schemes to protect their software and others would just as fast come up with hacks to circumvent it. So instead of producing better games it was a race to see who could develop a better protection scheme. There was one company I remember name Penguin Software. I believe they were out of Aurora Illinois. Basically they gave up on trying to protect their software and published not only the game but provided the source code of the game to encourage player feedback. The result was they were able to reduce their programming staff and were getting loads of code improvement feedback for enhanced play. They indicated with 100’s of independent programmers they could provide a superior product at a lower cost. Unfortunately I have no idea what happened to them but obviously they were ahead of their time.

Another music group called Raidohead placed their 7th album “In Rainbows” on their website for downloading. The fans that downloaded the album could pay what ever they wanted – even free.

I believe these individuals were beyond their time in thinking out of the box. But as we all know they were probably stomped on by their peer group to follow the “norm” After all industry can not have “rebels” who stir up the pot. The pot I am talking about is the one full of gold.

#14

True, they are steep nowadays. I usually wait till they hit the $10 mark.

#15

Hardly conclusive.
Who’s to say his now up-to-date virii/malware detector didn’t suddenly throw up a false positive due to one of it’s updates?

#16

And you need to be a programmer to know that? :rolleyes: The issue here is that there are release groups and I don’t know how they would release stuff with virus. It would kill their reputation and throw them out of the scene. So, you just need to be careful and look for releases from “prestigious” release groups and releases from thrustworthy sources.

Apart from that, if you play on PCs not connected to the Internet and with no valuable information, what’s the problem if you lose anything? Just reinstall and that’s it. No harm done. Maybe a few hours lost, that’s all.

#17

I’m probably one of the biggest torrent downloaders going but lately ive been thinking more with my morals than my money head i have looked at the sims 3 download and it seems to be working for most of the d/l’s i was soooooo tempted because im so impatient and i want to play now! not in 12 days lol but with the financial state this world is in and the millions of $ that it took to make the sims 3 not to mention the countless hours of work for ea staff i think they deserve the money i have to pay so im happy to say i wont be file sharing anymore after all we would all be so dissapointed if we put ea out of buisiness and never got to play a sims 4 wouldnt we? i know i would:)

#18

Hey, whatever flips your boat.

#19

Seem’s like the oppertunity for EA to conduct an experiment of sorts, a test if you will. The game has been leaked, and due to complaints with spore, the online activation for The Sims 3 was dropped. So if the Sim’s 3 tops spore’s rating as the most illegally downloaded game, or even run close to it, you can expect EA to be saying “Well we dropped the online DRM for Sim’s 3 and look what happened with that”. I’d be weary if I was the sharing community. This one may come back and bite you in the arse in the long run.

#20

Personally I’ve very little simpathy for EA and for the Sims franchise in general, especially now with the Sims 3. Let’s see:

  1. For the Sims3 it looks like they sign and encrypt the addons, i.e. it will no longer be easy to create and spread content for the game. So, the possibility to go to 3rd party sites and get great free content, like houses, furniture, wardrobe, etc, etc, seems to have gone. You want additional content? OK, send EA’s a ton of money and they will oblige.

  2. Worse yet, it is generally considered that third party content was actually better, and did I say much cheaper?, than EA’s. With the Sims 2, not only would you have to spend top bucks to get additional content (expansion packs) but it was generally considered subpar and not up to the quality and diversity of the free third party offerings.

  3. The game comes with relatively poor and limited content. Just 2 neighborhoods (one ingame, the other will need to be downloaded) and, judging from reports, they are also poor, not much to choose from, content wise.

All in all, the Sims 3 are clearly geared to make a TON more money from addons than from the game itself. And, to purchase that extra content, I suppose one needs to have a fully working copy, in order to download it.

#21

poor ea, lets support ea, we need them to make more games.

this is rubbish, they have plenty of money from idiots who want the latest fifa game and from long time followers of the sims 1 and 2. lets look at the sims 2 - base game 30 pound, even now a day b4 release. expansion packs i think 12 of them maybe wrong but guessing here at 20 pound each, stuff packs about 8 of them at 10 pound each. that means that i alone have spent over 350 pound on the sims 2, and lets not forget sims 1 now. the sims in general has always been a money maker and ea think they can treat us like dirt. lets hope the game works with the intel integrated chips coz they will lose a lot of money if it does not. ea seem to like dictating what computers are need to play there games which is generally high spec and highly expensive and money is an issue at mo, and with most systems thay people can afford dedicated graphics cards are not included so if they want people to play then they should aiim at masses. i personally will dl off torrent just to see if the game will play on my machine, im not spending 30 pounds that i dont really have in order to not play a game. This is one reason why i will download the game however i will buy it as knowing my luck an update will come along stopping the prited versions. im alittle annoyed at no 3rd party add ons, im a fan of inteeminator and the alike which provide add ons that ea are morally against coz it will send the wrong message to children.