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We met our friend Giddeon at the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he first sat down with the AbleGamers crew, Giddeon didn't want to play any games. He told us that with his disability gaming was difficult. Giddeon has a rare disease that caused the growth of his arms .. Read More
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Since 2004, the AbleGamers Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, has served more than 56 million members of the disabled community by advocating greater access in video games. Today, AbleGamers is a leader in the development of equipment, programs and services to those living with disabilities, hardships, and quality-of-life issues that are a result of chronic illness or trauma. It is our goal to ensure that all people, regardless of their disability, can use gaming as a tool to have enriched social experiences with friends, family, and the world at large.

Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff

Written by Steve Spohn

Published on 03 June 2009

{sidebar id=3}{sidebar id=1}In a recent report from Bloomberg, Sims 3 was estimated to be pirated over 180,000 times in just 4 days. Yet, in order to meet the demands of the public EA published the game with no DRM. "That outpaces the 400,000 downloads over three weeks for Electronic Arts' Spore," the article says, which was the most pirated game of 2008.

Now there is no way to release any games or software, for that matter, without some people pirating along the way. Nevertheless, the arguments for pirating have always been that DRM infects systems with needless software code, which harms the person who purchases the videogame, but the pirates will strip out the DRM anyway.

This latest development would give ground to the people who argued for DRM. After all, Electronic Arts goes out of its way to release their product without any protection to please us and the pirates return the favor by making this yet another extremely pirated game.

One victory was achieved over the pirates; the copy of Sims 3 being circulated on filesharing networks was not the complete game. Over 50% of the title, including one entire town was not finished in the release circulating before the street date, according to EA.

Congratulations EA, you managed to fool the pirates. They played right into your hand and now you will be able to place DRM into our systems because they downloaded the game even after trying to meet the public's demands. And to those pirates out there, thank you for making sure that every game I get from this point on will be full of ill conceived ways of protecting the games from pirates... who will suffer? Me!

The right to pirate

Pirating is absolutely illegal and should never be done under any circumstances. But do the pirates have any ground to stand on?

Many pirates will say that they simply want an opportunity to play the videogame before purchasing. AbleGamers can certainly understand this reasoning given that accessible gaming is a foreign concept to some titles. There is nothing worse than buying a videogame only to find out that you cannot play the title due to oversight by the game developer.

Does that give you the right to pirate?

Not according to the laws of the United States. We are not Robin Hood nor are any of us entitled to anything. We simply must not allow ourselves to excuse the behavior of downloading software because the world owes us.

And what about those that say that DRM is a disease and it causes problems with our computers?

They are absolutely correct. The DRM system is an evil mechanism, which mostly affects those of us who actually purchase the videogame. The problem is that those who do not want to pay for the videogame never will. Yet, those of us who purchase the game will continue to suffer because the companies must guard against those who want to the game free.

What are your thoughts on pirating games to check out the accessibility?

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Comments

0 #10 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — lea 2009-08-03 19:27

Hello,i have just bought the sims 3 CD to my Pc . I regester it and all . but when i click play , it said : insert your CD . But i did Inser It . lol.Please tell me what is problem ? and how can i play the sims 3

Thanks for helping me xoxoxoxox

0 #9 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — Steve 2009-06-06 18:07

it can be installed five different times using the activation feature. You can deactivate an instance of the game when you are no longer using it. If you need to reinstall your computer without deactivating you can simply contact EA. Seriously, telling people you can only install something x number of times is a scare tactic.

0 #8 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — johnnn 2009-06-04 16:31

it's impossible you can only install 5 times....unless the track cd keys using the internet....oth erwise there is no way. You could always reinstall windows or see which registry keys are written.

0 #7 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — Shawn 2009-06-03 08:04

You do know that you can remove SecuRom after it's installed and it will not affect the game(s) at all. Just go to http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/openlinks/thread.asp?pid=328 to download the removal tool.

0 #6 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — MinionJoe 2009-06-03 06:47

"thank you for making sure that every game I get from this point on will be full of ill conceived ways of protecting the games from pirates"

There is an alternative. It's called "NOT BUYING THE GAME". After Spore/SecuROM disabled my CD-R, fried 1GB of my RAM, and corrupted my OS, I've put EA on FULL boycott. I've not so much as downloaded a song for Rock Band since Sept 2008.

Games are going to be pirated regardless of what companies do. But it's up to US, the legitimate buyers, to spend our money with gamer-friendly companies such as Stardock and 2D.

0 #5 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — MinionJoe 2009-06-03 06:46

"thank you for making sure that every game I get from this point on will be full of ill conceived ways of protecting the games from pirates"

There is an alternative. It's called "NOT BUYING THE GAME". After Spore/SecuROM disabled my CD-R, fried 1GB of my RAM, and corrupted my OS, I've put EA on FULL boycott. I've not so much as downloaded a song for Rock Band since Sept 2008.

Games are going to be pirated regardless. But it's up to US, the legitimate buyers, to spend our money with gamer-friendly companies such as Stardock and 2D.

0 #4 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — purplexbanana 2009-06-03 06:17

omg Silly Girl scared me there. I was going to say, didn't they get rid of the DRM?

xD

thank you for saving me from a heart attack Nessy. my game has crashed several times as well.

0 #3 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — Nessy 2009-06-03 04:24

Silly Girl is indeed silly. There are no install limits on Sims 3. They pulled that DRM long ago. EB games employee doesn't know what he/she is talking about.

0 #2 COMMENT_TITLE_R E Pirating Sims 3 : They Called Your Bluff — Silly Girl 2009-06-03 03:41

I purchased the game today from EB Games and was told that I can only re-install it up to five times after that I have to purchase the CD all over again. I question this because as before with Sims and Sims 2 my game would crash several times and require a fresh install. So is that fair to those who purchase the game? Definitely not!