Indeed it is The Sims 3 piracy a disaster for EA, as I have anticipated when the game was leaked on torrent sites: at least 180,000 copies of the life sim were illegally downloaded in four days, Gamesindustry reports (personally, I think that the numbers are much higher).

However, it seems that even with 180,000 pirated copies downloaded, The Sims 3 beats another EA-developed title, Spore, that was also leaked on torrents and became the most pirated game of 2008 with 1.7 million downloads and 500,000 in ten days.

Electronic Arts claims that the leaked Sims 3 version is a “buggy, pre-final build of the game” from which an entire city is missing. It seems that this didn’t stop the gamers who were eager to finally get their hands on the title and play it. Even more, it appears that once the full version is out (on June 2) and it inevitably gets pirated, the number of downloads will certainly double (at least). We are really curious to see how will Electronic Arts react to the situation and, even more, how will this affect the game’s income: we should not forget that The Sims 3 comes with a heavy online mode which is only accessible if we have the legal version of the game.