DeathKnell
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Piracy of half-finished, "buggy" version outpacing Spore.
Pirates are getting an early jump on Sims 3. With several days still to go before the title hits retailers, Bloomberg (via GameDaily) is reporting that it's been downloaded 180,000 times between May 18 and 21. And it's it not even the finished version.
"The pirated version is a buggy, pre-final build of the game," said Electronic Arts representative Holly Rockwood. "It's not the full game. Half the world -- an entire city -- is missing from the pirated copy."
These numbers come courtesy of BigChampagne, a company that monitors file sharing. They outpace even Spore, which was downloaded 400,000 times over the course of three weeks and eventually went on to be the most pirated game of 2008. The high download numbers were attributed to Spore's digital rights management software, which is absent in Sims 3.
"That's the nature of the business these days," said Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson. "PC games are available before they are released. That's an issue they have been dealing with for some time."
The final version of Sims 3 is due June 2. We'll see if the high piracy rate continues after that.
Pirates are getting an early jump on Sims 3. With several days still to go before the title hits retailers, Bloomberg (via GameDaily) is reporting that it's been downloaded 180,000 times between May 18 and 21. And it's it not even the finished version.
"The pirated version is a buggy, pre-final build of the game," said Electronic Arts representative Holly Rockwood. "It's not the full game. Half the world -- an entire city -- is missing from the pirated copy."
These numbers come courtesy of BigChampagne, a company that monitors file sharing. They outpace even Spore, which was downloaded 400,000 times over the course of three weeks and eventually went on to be the most pirated game of 2008. The high download numbers were attributed to Spore's digital rights management software, which is absent in Sims 3.
"That's the nature of the business these days," said Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson. "PC games are available before they are released. That's an issue they have been dealing with for some time."
The final version of Sims 3 is due June 2. We'll see if the high piracy rate continues after that.
But links are dead.
