Following recent blockbuster leaks such as that of Resident Evil 5, Electronic Arts’ Sims 3 game has been leaked to P2P, a full 15 days before its official release date.
The ISO file is 4.94 GB large and the game has had its Securom DRM cracked. The Sims 3 was set to be EA’s flagship game for 2009 but may have some sales hindered by piracy. This is not always true however as despite being leaked, Resident Evil 5 still set sales record for the series.
The game has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times already and is being called the “real deal” with little to no bugs or crashes.
EA has had a bad year so far in terms of piracy and leaks, especially with the debacle that came with the release of the hit game Spore which eventually led to a class action suit against the developer.
Result for: securom
Electronic Arts has decided to drop DRM for its upcoming The Sims 3 game, a stark about-face from previous titles which have had DRM that has been, at worst, called “draconian.”
In September, the Will Wright blockbuster Spore was criticized unmercifully for its use of SecuROM DRM that only allowed the game to be installed three times total. SecuROM also stays installed in your system whether you want it there or not.
EA CEO John Riccitiello, said, at the time: “We’re going to see an evolution of these things. I wish we didn’t live in a world where we had to do these types of things. I want it to be seamless and easy - but I also don’t want to have a bonfire of money.”
Rod Humble, Sims 3 executive producer, has explained that DRM should be a thing of the past, at least for high profile releases like The Sims.
“To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed,” he notes. “We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.”
The Sims 3 has an early June release date.
Result for: securom
Electronic Arts, the publisher behind the most pirated game of 2008, Spore, has now released a De-Authorization Tool which it hopes will help quell some of the anger consumers have felt over the game’s crippling SecuROM DRM.
The site says:
“By running the de-deauthorization tool, a machine “slot” will be freed up on the online Product Authorization server and can then be re-used by another machine.
You can de-authorize at any time, even without uninstalling Spore, and free up that machine authorization. If you re-launch Spore on the same machine, the game will attempt to re-authorize.”
Previously, buyers of the game were stuck with only a few authorizations and lost one each time the game was installed, even after hard drive failure or video card updates.
This is only important to those that have already purchased the game though, because Spore is now available via Steam without any DRM.
Get the tool here: Spore De-Authorization Tool
