The Sims 3 Pirated Copies To Overtake Spore? News

EA was hit hard in the wallet when Spore found its way to torrents, in the process becoming the most pirated game of last year with over 400,000 illegal downloads across a three week period and an estimated 1.7 million downloads in total.

But it seems that record is set to be broken, with Bloomberg suggesting that the recent leak of The Sims 3 is on track to break past that figure with 180,000 downloads recorded between May 18th and May 21st.  Bloomberg suggests the overall cost of such numbers is likely to be around $9 million to-date.

Following the furore surrounding Spore's use of online DRM, EA made the decision to ship The Sims 3 with more traditional disk-based copy protection methods.  EA claims that the version leaked is a buggy pre-alpha build and is missing content featured in the final version.

The Sims franchise has surpassed 100 million sales to-date, although analysts believe that the piracy issue will see The Sims 3 initially selling less then its predecessor.  Pacific Crest's Evan Wilson expects The Sims 3 to shift 2.5 million copies in June compared to the 3 million units of The Sims 2 sold during the first two weeks upon its release.

TVG has contacted EA to comment on the figures but has yet to receive a response.