Rumor: Pirates get their scurvy hands on The Sims 3

by Xav de Matos on May 18th 2009 5:00PM

Unconfirmed reports circulating around the net claim the upcoming life-sim, The Sims 3, has leaked online weeks before its retail release. The Electronic Arts developed title is scheduled to land on store shelves on June 2. According to SoftSailor, torrents for The Sims 3 clock in around 5GB, but have yet to be confirmed as the full, final version of the game.

The Sims 3 is the long-awaited sequel to the best-selling Dollhouse simulator, announced last year. Recently (after coming under fire for extensive DRM use in Spore -- which totally didn't work anyway) Electronic Arts announced The Sims 3 would not include any online authentication, relying solely on a serial number as copy protection. Joystiq has contacted Electronic Arts for comment and puts a bounty on the heads of all pirates everywhere. We're giving away cookies.

[Via GamePolitics]

Source

Tags: ea, electronic-arts, maxis, piracy, rumor, sims-3, the-sims-3

Reader Comments (96)

Pirate spotted. Where's my cookies, Joystiq?

and none of that raisin crap either, i want pure chocolate chip, otherwise you guys are next on the hit list.

I am only going to reply to Zertoss by quoting a saying:
"good hackers are known by everyone great hackers are known by no one."

You could apply this definition to Pirates. =) so I could say the same about you... now where is my cookie... :)

I'm a pretty big supporter or anti-piracy but I'm not gonna lie, IWANTNOW! (I would of course buy it when it is released) Oh well, I guess I can wait about 2 weeks like I always do.

Slightly Unrelated,

Any guys out there big fans of the Sims? I always see posts like, "Yeah my girlfriend/mom/sister/mistress loves the sims and I'm getting it for her"

I'm not a huge fan, but I enjoy it. I find sadistic ways to kill all of my neighbors, so maybe I'm not playing it right.

nah, that's what the sims was made for. letting us vent our psychopathic wishes on virtual people so that we're all good in real life!

"so that we're all good in real life!"

Oh, I just call it practice FOR real life.

My sister seriously might don the eyepatch and peg-leg just to play this. She's never pirated a game in her life, but she might make the extra effort just to play this early.

If she does, she deserves to be raped and pillaged.

The line starts with Avatar?

if she's hot, we go with both. if she's not, we pillage and move on.

I wish I could take credit for that. Now to use it in every comment!

Would it be illegal for EA to put their own torrents online with content that does something terrible to your computer after you've played it for a certain amount of time? I know that it could only be obtained illegally, but the malicious intent is probably against the law as well. Seems like that would be an effective way to deter piracy though, spreading FUD around and fucking with people's registries.

That would be one way to handle it.

But then People would start to stick only with only certain release groups they trust

What's stopping EA from releasing The.Sims.3.FULL.RETAIL-aXXo? The point wouldn't be to stop piracy, but rather to instill enough fear to keep Regular Joe from jumping online to save a few bucks. I'd wager that the most hardcore pirates run games in a sandboxed VM, because who knows what even the trusted groups might add to the executable?

True True, I agree with what your saying

aXXo is a wannabe P2P kiddy who steals scene releases, recodes, and releases utter crap. There's absolutely no reason to run these games in a VM (which would absolutely kill performance) or any sort of sandbox. As long as people stick with actual scene releases instead of P2P garbage, there's no risk. In fact, I'd much rather a cracked executable on my system with invasive copy protection removed than the original. Best of all, the original executables with SecuROM actually run inside their own type of VM which actually negatively affects performance. Cracks which fully remove SecuROM protection (unlike this release, which actually wraps the SecuROM VM inside another VM to handle SecuROM's checks) tend to give a slight performance boost in-game.

Well, as someone with a computer incapable of running modern games (a Mac running off a dual PPC G4), I know nothing about software piracy and am unsure what a "scene release" is. Your argument seems to make sense, but I'm still not sure how you can verify the source of the upload. It's not like they have a public website proclaiming what's good and what isn't (I know that torrent sites have comment fields and all, but that requires trial-and-error on the end-user's part), and if you're one of the uber-cool people with access to the top-level sites, this wouldn't really deter you in the first place. I'm talking about what the average person (which doubtlessly makes up the majority of the downloads) knows about pirating, and how they would easily fall prey to such practices.

If you get your releases from a reputable source, it's a non-issue. Additionally, so long as you can get a verified .sfv file (packaged with each release and non illegal in itself), you can easily verify the authenticity of the .rar archives the release is packed in.

At least better graphics. ;)

Color me unimpressed.

Knowing Electronic Arts, it's not too far fetched that they released this as both a demo and to justify their psychotic anti-piracy stance. Watch and see if The Sims 3 doesn't ship with DRM, something that is now "justified".

Nope, it comes with SecuROM and a serial as DRM. Both of which were cracked.

Yarr.

So what? For us customers that's basically just a sign that this game is REALLY popular. Everything that gets released in stores ends up on the web one way or another. Only those things that are really popular make it out beforehand because the "pirates" are already on the look out for those titles (that is true for ALL media, music, movies, games, books etc). I can hear EA complaining already about the billions of dollars they're gonna make ... and the x-million they COULD have made if the world was a place full of smiley unicorns and candy farts... I am so tired of this whole piracy debate ... it exists ... people get to realize what a piece of shit most products are BEFORE they spend their money on it and the vendors complain about that. This is the whole issue to me. Yawn.

not.
a.
rumor.

I heard this rumor a while ago on 4chan. My guess is that it's untrue, and that's where it started.

...it's not a rumour.

Well, when I originally heard it, it was probably untrue. It was like a couple months ago, so...

a couple months ago on 4chan I heard that the earth's core had cooled to a mild 80F. I'm in the final stages of planning my vacation as we speak.

I'll admit I'm going to pirate it, but only because it's out a bit more then a month early, Once I can buy it I will I just want to play it now.

why is "Dollhouse" capitalized?

i didn't know The Sims 3 was a simulator of the TV show..

That was the joke. Derp.

A side effect of that show is that whenever I read the word Dollhouse, I pronounce it in Victor's faux-russian accent from the first few episodes.

Dulhaus.

Boy, Joystiq, you sure are being coincidentally convenient about knowing about these leaks! Now I've got Rock Band Unplugged and Sims 3 under my belt! All I can say is thanks, fellow scurvymen!

Seriously, Joystiq: Get off the fence. Either be pro-pirate and get fired by Yahoo, or be totally against it, bu none of this "Oh I dunno maybe a game was leaked" crap.

they're owned by AOL, not yahoo.

thats because they got a tipline dumbass

Yeah, it's definitely up on all major *ahem* arrrrr matey sites. Not so much a rumor, might want to change that. Sucks.

Misfired reply, downvote away.

nah, i can't downvote a guy with an avatar like THAT

Haven't found it yet, must be a fake.

Fail.

Alternately, lern 2 internetz

I highly, HIGHLY doubt this.

Why? because when I was working at EA up until the release of The Sims 2. The literally hand cuffed a dude with a briefcase and put him on a private jet to fly him to the location to get the disk mastered. If there is anything EA does right is keep a HUGE lid on builds of software.

So I'm going to say BS on this one. Unless standards changed, no one leaked a copy of Sims 3.

Standards changed....

Oh, that is just sad. I think they should start looking inward if they want this kind of thing to stop happening.

This is how pirates thank EA for not using DRM.

Sad.

Previous 50 Comments

Rumor: Pirates get their scurvy hands on The Sims 3

Reader Comments (96)

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:54PM Zertoss said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:37PM Sly C said

Posted: May 18th 2009 8:26PM badr said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:33PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:43PM Zertoss said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:38PM Sly C said

Posted: May 19th 2009 3:16AM Yamikotai said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:35PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:38PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:52PM aristokrat said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:35PM Sly C said

Posted: May 21st 2009 12:05AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:37PM aristokrat said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:40PM Jawmuncher said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:51PM aristokrat said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:18PM Jawmuncher said

Posted: May 18th 2009 10:30PM DWells55 said

Posted: May 18th 2009 11:20PM aristokrat said

Posted: May 19th 2009 1:11AM DWells55 said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:42PM metatron5369 said

Posted: May 18th 2009 10:48PM DWells55 said

Posted: May 18th 2009 5:50PM ROBOCOLOSSUS said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:12PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:20PM scld said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:37PM SpeeGold said

Posted: May 18th 2009 7:09PM iHavePants said

Posted: May 18th 2009 7:47PM SpeeGold said

Posted: May 19th 2009 10:19AM Ghen said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:54PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 6:56PM thebza451 said

Posted: May 18th 2009 7:54PM Nick the Hero of Canton said

Posted: May 18th 2009 7:55PM Vordus said

Posted: May 18th 2009 8:10PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 18th 2009 9:16PM Sly C said

Posted: May 19th 2009 2:18PM Slaziman said

Posted: May 18th 2009 10:37PM StrikeFear13 said

Posted: May 18th 2009 11:19PM aristokrat said

Posted: May 18th 2009 11:21PM aristokrat said

Posted: May 18th 2009 11:48PM Sly C said

Posted: May 18th 2009 11:36PM Chulipin said

Posted: May 19th 2009 1:13AM DWells55 said

Posted: May 19th 2009 3:43AM RyogaVee said

Posted: May 19th 2009 8:41AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 19th 2009 11:21AM Batzarro The worlds WOrst Detect said

Posted: May 19th 2009 12:11PM rullers said

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