The Sims 3 was leaked out a few days before the official release date. Normally, this will cause for an alarm in EA which leads them to take legal action on this to stop the game from being downloaded. However, EA CEO John Riccitiello was not even fazed by this, but was even sort of happy that it got leaked. Ironic.
EA CEO John Riccitiello said the game that everybody downloaded was just a demo version and not the full game. Ha! “You identified our secret marketing campaign!” stated by John Riccitiello.
“A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community,” he said, “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.”
Yup, for a person that downloaded the leaked version, there was a message stating they wouldn’t have access to all of the content available in the game and purchase of the retailed version will be required for updates and all the goodies to come.
“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.”
Guess EA did have an answer to piracy after what happen to Spores. So you heard the man go pirate “FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes”.