EA Views Sims 3 Leak as 'Demo Program'

The Sims 3 was illegally downloaded something like 200,000 times prior to its actual release, outpacing the most pirated title of 2008, EA's Spore. Normally, you'd think this sort of rampant piracy would really be quite upsetting to a publisher. Ironically, however, this kind of leak for Sims 3 essentially served as a "demo program," EA CEO John Riccitiello told us as part of a larger E3 interview.

Although Riccitiello was being facetious, and EA says it did not deliberately leak the code, he noted that the result was basically an inadvertent demo program, encouraging illegal downloaders to make a purchase to play the full game. 

"You identified our secret marketing campaign!" joked Riccitiello. "That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program."

A reflection of EA's sudden "affection" for pirates?

On a serious note, he then 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."

Ultimately, Riccitiello believes that games like Sims 3 are moving in the direction of services, not packaged goods. This, he noted, is the best way to combat piracy. 

"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 pirateWarhammer Online, if they're going to give us a year's subscription it's not exactly a total loss."