The long-awaited Sims 3 game, due for release on June 2nd, was pirated late last week. There is some question as to whether it's a pre-release version or the version that will be in the stores. The advanced players have torrented copies of the game and examined it, played it, and pulled it apart. I've been reading the reviews and bug reports for the past three days and while these must be taken with a grain of salt, it's beginning to look like EA Games has created a monstrosity. It is very difficult to play more than one family per neighborhood; if you switch between households all the progress made with the first household will be lost. The selection of furniture and other objects is very limited, most likely because EA wants to sell such tings through their online store at inflated prices. The Sims themselves, while more detailed, aren't any smarter than they were before and look like they were created by the Pillsbury corporation. There have been reports of graphics problems and videocard overheating. Worst of all, the game may be very difficult to modify, which will severly limit, or even eliminate, custom content, and this is a game series that thrives on hacks and custom content. More details are available at MATY; it makes for pretty grim reading. Again, it is possible that we're looking at a pre-release beta version and not the finished product but no one really knows for sure. I truly hope it's the former. EA Games has not yet issued any statements about any of this.
If you were planning on buying this game, don't, not yet; if you have it on preorder, cancel it. Don't go anywhere near it until at least the end of the year, when we'll have more data available, a couple of patches, and hopefully some decent custom content and hacks to make the game playable, if that's even possible. Oh, and the torrented version contains SecuROM, too. Wonderful.
Nice job, EA.
