EA: Did You Pirate Sims 3? Cool! Welcome to the Sims 3 Demo!
The Sims 3, as it stands, is but one in the long list of PC games that have found their way through all the torrent and usenet groups even before it hit retail stands. EA has estimated that over 200,000 people individually downloaded a leaked version of the game days before its actual release date. When asked about this, EA’s CEO John Riccitiello coyly responded that this leak was part of the company’s “demo program” for the game. He quipped, “you identified our secret marketing campaign! That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program.”
Of course, one would have to note the intense irony in Mr. Riccitiello’s words, as he represents the same company that got a lot of flak for introducing a heavy-handed DRM scheme in one of their previous PC games, Spore. Though he was clearly kidding, Riccitello continued, “In the game that was pirated there’s [only] one city [out of two]… and Sims 3 has a massive amount of content, and a lot of it is downloaded once you register with EA… and join the online community. So you get that content in addition to the second city [which is downloadable for people who register], and that’s a major component… A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community, where you are sampling assets created by other people. So for the pirate consumer, they don’t get the second town, they don’t get all the extra content, and they don’t get the community. It was only concentrated on Poland and China, but I think of it as not being that different than a demo.”
He muses on about selling the service as a better incentive than the actual game product itself: “I’m a longtime believer that we’re moving to selling services that are disc-enabled as opposed to packages that have bolt-ons. … If you see what we’re doing with Madden Online, FIFA Ultimate Team or Sims 3, and Dragon Age is probably a 100-hour game by itself, but what comes post-release [for these games] is bigger still. So the point I’m making is, yes I think that’s the answer [to piracy]. And here’s the trick: it’s not the answer because this foils a pirate, but it’s the answer because it makes the service so valuable that in comparison the packaged good is not. So you can only deliver these added services to a consumer you recognize and know; people don’t pirate servers very often, but it has happened. So I think the truth is we’ve out-serviced the pirate. … By the way, if there are any pirates you’re writing for, please encourage them to pirate FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes… if they would just pirate lots of it I’d love them. [laughs] Because what’s in the middle of the game is an opportunity to buy stuff. I increasingly believe that’s the way the market’s going because that’s how the consumer wants to consume. And by the way, [regarding] my competitor, do you think Blizzard gets upset when someone pirates a disc of one of their online games? While we don’t want to see people pirate Warhammer Online, if they’re going to give us a year’s subscription it’s not exactly a total loss.”
I highly agree that PC games, particularly enclosed single-player experiences such as The Sims, should offer better incentive for people to actually go out and buy the game. By making the online community dealie go through a series of checks, EA can smartly identify who’s actually using a legitimate copy of the game and who’s not, and filter them out accordingly. On the console side of things, Microsoft’s already got something like that going on with Xbox Live (chipped consoles can’t go online, I believe — and let’s face it, Xbox Live is what makes the 360), but Nintendo and Sony have yet to implement something like that on their handhelds, as well as on the Wii. Without discriminating between people who own actual copies of a certain game and the rest of the riff-raff, the floodgates are open for cheaters and whatnot, bringing down the entire online community. Mario Kart DS would be my oft-cited example of pirates/cheaters ruining what was supposed to be an awesome online experience.
Source: IndustryGamers.com
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