EA seems to be finally learning from its DRM mistakes!

I will update as more news comes. Feel free to let me now if you found some info.

Hell hath frozen over?

I would wager a guess it's half experiment, half realization that Sims 3 is not really the kind of game pirates are really targeting so all you'd have is a bunch of pissed off parents and the game for their kids.

An experiment? Maybe, but I hope it's successful.

Good, now if only they'll take a page from Egosoft's playbook and make that retroactive on previous titles.  As I alluded to in another thread, I chose Sins over Mass Effect because I'm not paying retail price for a rental game.

Egosoft? Don't you mean Ubisoft?

Egosoft went back and removed the DRM for X3 post release.

This is good. Hopefully EA keeps it up, trims their bureaucracy (!), vastly improves their customer service, and dispenses with things such as the *necessity* of logging in to official online servers to play your games.

Credit where credit is due.

Frogboy and company have shaken things up and made a mark.

That's good to know.  I have a friend that loves the Sims, but he would have never purchased it with harsh DRM stuff on it.

I guess this is a result of the filed suits concerning the DRM on Mass Effect, Spore and so on. Namely trying to prevent more suits.

I don't belive this. I think that EA is just bull shiting us.

Actually that was also MY first thought. 

A lot of it is probably purely financial as well. The Sims franchise has been one of the best selling in history, so Sims 3 is expected many, many copies. SecuROM charges per disk. I don't know if it's a flat rate or dependant on which features you want, but if it's not a flat rate I can definitely see them scaling back. If the difference is $1 per disk and they sell 10 million copies, that's not really pocket change even for EA in these times. And it'll sell a lot more than 10 million.

i wonder why they pick Sims 3....    it's obviously a test of some sort...  but what type....  

is it....

- to prevent more suits like those of previous games "see Star Adder 's  reply #11"

- a test that checks the popularity of sims,  and possible work on Sims 4 should it be succesfull "sims 2 was without online activation, having the Sims 3 without online activation aswell gives a better few op popularity"

- a more ... sneaky... test that looks at selling-numbers, to see if removed DRM actualy  increases sales...

frankly i cant believe EA doing this...   if the release date was April 1st  i'd be convinced it was a joke..

I have heard EA has had some layoffs... Perhaps they realized their old business model isn't working. *sound of the entire world laughing in the background at the idea of EA changing their ways* Ah well, we can always hope.

Shadow, here is another option:

They are making Sims 3 easy to pirate, but the xpacs for it will be chock full of DRM to try to force all the people who have Sims 3 and want the xpacs into buying them in an attempt to make even more money.

Unfortunatly, they added TAGES DRM for X3: Terran Conflict (cool game by the way).

Money can convince people to change their ways, Alway. I really don't think is an experiment, more like common sense, as the millions of Sims fans will be outraged if EA puts SecuROM on the disk. I also doubt that EA will put SecurROM on the expansions, for the reason I just wrote. I'm also getting the feeling that EA will continue to put SecuROM on future PC releases, because I really don't think that EA will all of sudden stop using SecuROM. Only time will tell.

Nothing to do with DRM but the Sims 3 looks killer!

And yes, I'm just going to make virtual versions of everyone I know and make them walk around my dream house in pants.  Is that so wrong?  IS IT?

Pants?

He probably means just pants.

It'd be funny if you could let your Sims do pot or some other drug. Or take or acholism.

Which Egosoft will remove in time.  And to be fair, TAGES is better (slightly) than what Reunion used for its DRM; *STARFORCE*!

As to EA learning its lesson, HA!  Hell will freeze over, Sol will go supernova, Andromeda will crash into the Milky Way, the Universe will rip/crunch itself to death and time itself will end before that happens.

I hope those assholes go bankrupt.

Don't let them see that, or they may put SecuROM back on...

Like the guy said, Egosoft has a history of releasing patches to "free up" their games. X3:TC apparently had some DRM on board that I didn't even care about because, no matter how bad it apparently is, it's going to disappear with a patch a year or so after release.Egosoft rocks. Their games are epic, buggy masterpieces. I love those guys. Stardock is a good fit for Egosoft and I love the Stardock model in many ways too. I just can't stand Brad and his chunky posturing.

Let's assume Sims 3 is going to be the cash cow that the other two have been, then it would probably cost them more to enforce the DRM on it, which is probably a pretty heavily social game in the first place (facebook style), than to let it spread itself "socially" and mop up the committed players who're willing to pay for rug textures and special wallpaper. I reckon Sims 3 at retail will be a demo for the "actual" paying experience.

Um, remember it's publishers that generally insist on DRM, not devs.

Egosoft are good guys. They publish with DRM but remove it as a matter of course later. They're also really mod friendly. Egosoft are probably my favourite devs still going and I HATE DRM. I'm not a robot, I understand that they're people who need to be paid so they have to do what their publisher tells them.

Piranha Bytes are similar, in that with Gothic Three the original game had starforce but it was eventually removed with a patch. (a patch that actually made the original game somewhat playable....)