Certainly not a statement you’d normally hear from a top executive of one of the worlds’ largest games publishers, and certainly not from the man at the top, CEO John Riccitiello.  But low and behold, that’s exactly what he’s done. “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…” he revealed in a recent interview with IndustryGamers. “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.”  In other words, what Riccitiello’s saying here is that the pirated disc is now more like the gravy and silverware, whereas the meat and potatoes of the title are contained online.

Now certified as a genuine success for EA, the Sims 3 was leaked weeks before the game saw store shelves, and included a note inside the file not to connect the game online.  The same note encouraged people to buy the game if they liked it.  Now call me cynical, but there’s something in the back of my mind that just screams ‘guerilla marketing’.  If that is in fact the case, I stand and salute you EA.  Well played.  Even Riccitiello is willing to give a comical nod to the concept, stating, “You identified our secret marketing campaign!  That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program.”  Demo or not, it put the new title in a lot of hands, and generated one heckuva buzz that couldn’t be bought.

While the Sims 3 physical disk does include anti-piracy measures, a large portion of the game isn’t even on the disc.  Upon installation, users are presented with the proverbial ‘flip the switch to bring this badboy online’ option, upon which they then must download a massive 3gb ‘update’ in order to obtain the full experience. “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,” Riccitiello explained.

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