It's leaked. Pirate Bay is not the right place to go for confirmed "releases" though. There are other sites that only exist to post each and every pirate release imaginable - and Sims 3 has not been nuked so it's a working release.

Guess we'll see what EA does, but as kryo pointed out in one of the other threads their motivation was probably mostly financially driven anyway since DRM costs per-disk.

Holy...

This is why, and for no other reason.

Any real fan will buy the game, or will buy it after testing it to make sure it's not tripe.

Also, if my memory serves(which it usually doesn't) Spore was released(pirated) the day before Public release, with all of it's archaic DRM removed, so if they ramp up the DRM for this, they're just making more sound business decisions.

well hopefully this wont disuade ea from publishing it with no drm other then diskcheck as it was planning, I suppose its part of a test by ea, everyone knew it was going to be pirated but for such a big title as that, the real rest is to see how sales turn out even with it being rather easy to pirate

EA and Microsoft are 2 companies I will never buy nething from...  I've pirated every mildly interesting looking game they've ever made only because

1. They whore your money away with their rediculous expansion

2. Their customer service is awful

3. They are supporters of rediculously invasive DRM and are appossed to internet privacy and protection from traffic shaping

4. everything they release is mediocre half finished and never updated

5. Everything they've ever released is way over hyped Example: Gears of war, spore, halo 3 .....  All are in some way involved with microsoft

Actually I was thinking about pirating this game then I saw that they dont have invasive DRM have good custumer support and update their games
 I didn't know what to think I'm so used to peice of shit gaming companies anymore I didn't think creators even cared about customer satisfaction nemore

Anyways after I read up on you guys a little bit I went out and payed the full 45 Dollars for this game and so far I'm very happy I did...  Keep up the good work I'm a big fan I also bought Sins of a Solar empire and plan on buying the expansions for that and this game.

This sounds like it has more to do with an internal problem for EA than its fight against piracy in general. Besides, they already announced not using their typical tactics Sims 3.

Serves them right for delaying the game 4 months just to advertise!

Played it for 8 hours straight yesterday, pretty addictive.  Similar to Sims 1 but definitely a bit better (never played the second game).  Got to rank 9/10 in the crime jobline.  You can choose various things to do while working which give bonuses, ie: "look for extra work" lets you make more money by doing a sidejob while your at work, or "conspire with accomplices" boosts your relationships with coworkers, which goes toward your promotion meter.  I went in expecting to play for 20 minutes and after 8 hours I think it might happen again today

Well with an EA product, bugs are a sign that the game is ready to ship.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm not a big fan of the sims ...  I might try it when it

is released. Most likely I'll give it to my niece.

I'm looking forward to SC2 ...

That was rude.

Pirates will steal just about anything. That doesn't mean it'll actually impact the game's sales.

I never understood the whole "It's crap, I refuse to pay for it!  So I'll pirate it instead!" argument.

If a game sucks, then you shouldn't want to play it period.  If you play it and get any enjoyment out of it, you kind of owe it to the developer/publisher who created it. 

It's a poor attempt to justify their sense of entitlement.