Piracy be damned!

Despite leaking onto torrent sites a week plus before its launch date, with illegal downloads topping 180,000 before you could even lay hands on a legit copy of the game, The Sims 3 has steamrolled through retail. The third iteration of EA’s God-mode, life-simulation sandbox franchise clocked in with 1.4 million units sold in its first week alone.

What contributed to this becoming EA’s best PC title launch ever? Well, let’s take a look at some factors, shall we?

First, The Sims 3 was not saddled with burdensome DRM issues. We all know the hooplah that surrounded the release of Spore last year and the attendant poopstorm that followed because of SecuROM’s attachment to the product. Nothing but a simple disc check is required this time around.

“We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future,” read a statement from EA, in part.

Second, it’s the freakin’ Sims. You would somehow expect less? This franchise has always been a juggernaut and won’t be stopping anytime soon, based on their track record. If you knew how many hours I sunk into the first two, you’d just shake your head sadly and never be able to look me in the eyes again. I couldn’t help myself, though. It’s like a drug and I’m sure my 1.4 million former fellow addicts who just got their first hit again would concur.

Regardless, this is a step in the right direction for EA. Maybe they’ll see that consumers respond positively to DRM-free games and SecuROM will rapidly go the way of the Dodo. What do you all think?