The power of the internet saves the day.

YES!!!

It is very well known that DRM only makes it difficult for the authentic customer.

Guess they actually got alot of consumer complaints. Anyway the typical sims player isn't browsing the Pirate Bay as much as the FPS players, and they don't want to anger all the casual players who spend way to much on those games, so this move makes sense.

I was frustrated with EA's approach with a Battlefield 2 expansion pack. I had to register with EA and register the product on the internet simply to play offline. I quickly entered a never-ending loop of receiving a 'you're already registered' message and then a 'please register' message. After extreme frustration I emailed EA's support. I was pleased to see a quick response and after a couple of email exchanges the person claimed I was good to go. However, I found myself so frustrated with the whole experience that I totally lost interest and to this day have not fired up the game.

So yeah - don't make it so hard to play a game I paid for.

As someone on Kotaku said... PC gamers will show their appreciation by pirating the hell out of this

So far, I think Bethesda's trumps them all. Make games that kick so much ass that even if they're pirated a ton, they're still #1 blockbuster sellers for years to come.

So unfortunately true. It's a lose lose situation for the industry.

I can't see why people are so surprised that EA is doing this. They ARE under new management, which is why they are doing different games that are risky.

I just hope they do this now on for ALL games. But, I don't mind if games linked to accounts like Battlefield 2,2142, etc Stay that way though. Still, good for EA for listening to their customers.

To anyone who thinks Sims getting pirated will hurt them, slap yourself real hard in the face.

Spore was one of the most pirated games last year, yet it still sold what? Over 2 million copies? Probably a good amount more by now.

Also you fail to realize this, people who pirate wouldn't have bought the game to begin with. So they lose little to no sales and in fact heavy DRM just makes it more likely to be pirated.

I dunno I remember on a few instances I switched to hacked version of game i own just to avoid the annoying DRM.

Why do you think they're taking this "risky" move with the Sims? Of course it's going to sell amazingly well regardless. However, they can look back and say, "Okay, the Sims 3 sold great, but look at the number of pirated copies. We shouldn't avoid DRM on less popular titles because they wouldn't be able to survive the same backlash. This just goes to prove that DRM is necessary."

PC gamers are just as stupid as console gamers. The latter lacks brains, and the former lacks common sense.

Please look up Koroush Ghazi's essay on piracy, courtesy of TweakGuides. Learn a little bit more about the economics of what Piracy really does, and the true point of DRM, and then think about it for a second. If we don't pay the people in the industry, the industry suffers. If the industry suffers, we suffer. Whether it be quantity, quality, or choice of medium, the user, ultimately, suffers - if the industry suffers.

It's a long read, but it's an incredibly good article, and it really makes some interesting points.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

Why even use a serial number? What's the point?

Sorry, Marcus Yam, I doubt EA is doing this because of your article.

The last 2 games i bought, retail legit copies. I had to download a pirated copy to actually play the game. They both refuse to run without the cracked exe, but run fine(with the retail dvd in the drive) with the cracked exe.

Its utterly retarded when you have to pirate a game you bought legally so you can use what you bought legally.

DRM can kiss my arse. It doesnt stop pirates, but it pisses the hell off of legal users, like me.

Finally, someone actually gets it. +1.

Interesting. I have the Battlefield 2 Expansion pack sitting on my shelf here, unopened. Now I'm not so sure that I want to open it

why is toms hardware so arrogant that they think EA is exclusively agreeing with the article they wrote earlier at some point...

total BS... my respect for tomshardware is going farther and farther down the drain

one more stupid or arrogant thing like this and i'm just gonna plain stop coming here... toms is a joke now

The Sims 3 will not doubt be a major seller and with out any DRM this will only prove that DRM is not only useless but is a waste of money to the developers/publishers as well as a unnecessary pain in the butt to us gamers.

Funny that you say one lacks common sense when you lack intelligence. Not once did I say no DRM was risky, in fact I said the COMPLETE OPPOSITE. " heavy DRM just makes it more likely to be pirated."

The risky parts I was talking about what games like Dead space, Mirror's edge, BF:Heroes, etc. The old EA would've of just stuck with old series that sold and not attempt new ones.

Like I said, heavy DRM cost more then it saves. It's quite pathetic that my pirated copy of spore has much less problems then a DRM infested retail copy. Yet like I said before, spore still sold millions of copies.

So no PC gamers are don't lack common sense, you just lack intelligence.

How NICE of them

I am a newcomer to gaming who just purchased Medal of Honor AirbornE.When my computer asked if I wanted to format the disk, I assumed the DVD was inadvertently shipped blank. Is there a possibility that this is related to what you refer to as DRM??

I was agreeing with what you said, and adding to it.

*ahem*

So we are back to the old Safe Disk method of just the CD-Key numbers/letters. That's great.
That's why for several years I didn't purchase any PC Games because of Starforce,SercureROM,Activation and other crap.

I just wonder why none of the game publishers / developers have decided to use some sort of USB fob / hardened flash drive for game control, since it would be, slightly, harder to pirate hardware than software.

Put the game as a free download but make customers buy a USB fob / secure flash drive (or two pack) that is required to be plugged in to play the game. You could then install the game on any machine you want and just take the fob with you. Given how cheap flash memory & embedded processors have gotten in the last few years, you could put a control chip / encryption chip and a few gigs of save-game room on a thumb drive sized object for less than $20 US. I'm not sure about anyone else but I'd be willing to pay the full game price + $10 to have zero install problems, no spyware / SecuRom BS, be able to install a game on any system I have access to and have my save-games (or whatever you want to put on the drive) with me.

Just a thought

Too bad. I really liked DRM on my machine.

I think the key there is your use of the word "slightly". It'd still be cracked, and now your legitimate customers have the inconvenience of carrying around/needing to plug in a USB device whenever they want to play. Really no better, and possibly worse, than securom BS.

But I don't care, I've been playing Blizzard games almost exclusively for the last 10 years and I'm not about to stop now. DRM doesn't really apply to mp-centric games.

the question you have to ask .. is EA getting rid of securom COMPLETELY NOW , for all new titles (of corsue it would e to clostly tor emove it from already released titles) . or is the the only new EA game that is revertign to cd key ?

were you born yesterday my friend ???

Blizzard is hardly a "mostly multiplayer" company ,

in fact the ONLY game (not coutnign expanisons) that they ever made that was only MP , was WoW ,, and it wasn't even thier best game ever hoenstly.

the opriginal warcraft game wasan RTS taht for teh most part was intended for Sp gaming , other titels that blizzard got famous for were

Diablo , star craft

all three originally being rts or rpg's intended mainly for SINGLE PLAYER play

gads i sick of this yougner crowd wearing of the "greatness" of Wow, perosnally i think wow sucks even asn an mmorpg it defintely DIDN"T hold a candle to it's RTS predecessors ( the original Warcraft series) which were much better RTS games that WoW is a a MMORPG. and dont go quoting player base and sales figures. main stream tards love shitty mediocre games, it's a fact , and further more such figures don't actually prove shit from what's agood game or not. Hell , millions of dogs liek to sniff a-- and eat piles of sh-- doesn't mean sh-- is a gourmet meal.

I loved blizzard until they bought into to the whole mmorpg craze . them doign so only told me that theya re jsut anotehr mediocre company that isn't concerned with pushing the art of game design as much as they are concerned with making the big green dollar. same case as many comapnies in the industry , as well as many movies in the movie industry .. just more midnless half baked dribble, only now they can do a half baked game and just say "its an MMORPG".

and yes i have played wow and i ddidn't like it , it was nothing new and liek 99% of it's genre it feels like something that is unfished. it really DID NOTHING to advance MMORPG's , and it certainly wasn't the first MMORPG so it cant even say that for it's self. a lot of dummies out ther say that every mmorpg clones WoW , but LETS FACE THE TRUTH WoW is a clone of another game it's self , just has warcraft's face painted on it !!!