We've noted previously piracy for Electronic Arts (EA)'s The Sims 3 has been massive. As it turns out, they're pretty cool with it -- CEO John Riccitiello describes it in an interview as "[their] secret marketing campaigning", laughing to himself --  certainly not the bearish attitude we're used to when the topic of piracy comes up.

Elaborating, he leaves the impression piracy can actually work to the advantage of the publisher and developer:

"That was a very large scale – concentrated on Poland and China – demo program. In the game that was pirated there's [only] one city [out of two]... and Sims 3 has a massive amount of content, and a lot of it is downloaded once you register with EA... and join the online community. So you get that content in addition to the second city [which is downloadable for people who register], and that's a major component... A huge amount of the gameplay is an overlay for the community, where you are sampling assets created by other people. So for the pirate consumer, they don't get the second town, they don't get all the extra content, and they don't get the community. It was only concentrated on Poland and China, but I think of it as not being that different than a demo."

The company's VP of Communications Jeff Brown responded to our inquiry on whether this meant EA had leaked the game themselves or not:

"I sat in on that interview and John did not mean to imply that we deliberately leaked the code – we did not.  However, the game was developed in a way that would mitigate losses to piracy.  Because a large portion of the game can only be accessed from servers – and only by those with registered code – people who downloaded from the pirate crack, got an incomplete version.   

John’s point was this:  Seeing the game pirated was regrettable, but it may have resulted in teasing people into buying the full version.  The pirate crack acted as an illegal and unauthorized demo program."

The free "Exchange" content saw over seven million downloads in its first week alone, and the game itself over 1.4 million purchases in the same period -- so it seems their attitude is one that works. The Sims 3 has essentially no digital rights management (DRM), as well, so the results can only be good news for PC gamers as a whole.

The future of PC gaming, at least for EA, is in additional content like with The Sims 3, Mass Effect, etc.,  -- essentially, competing with piracy by offering a superior package in the long-term. The new philosophy at the offices appears to find this the best way to fight it, an approach Valve has helped forge and encourage in their own way over the years, and given EA signed with them not too long ago, perhaps some of that has rubbed off:

"I'm a longtime believer that we're moving to selling services that are disc-enabled as opposed to packages that have bolt-ons," Riccitiello remarks. "If you see what we're doing with Madden Online, FIFA Ultimate Team or Sims 3, and Dragon Age is probably a 100-hour game by itself, but what comes post-release [for these games] is bigger still.  So the point I'm making is, yes I think that's the answer [to piracy].  And here's the trick: it's not the answer because this foils a pirate, but it's the answer because it makes the service so valuable that in comparison the packaged good is not. So you can only deliver these added services to a consumer you recognize and know; people don't pirate servers very often, but it has happened. So I think the truth is we've out-serviced the pirate."

At this point he gets particularly lighthearted, even encouraging people to pirate some of their games:

"By the way, if there are any pirates you're writing for, please encourage them to pirate FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes... if they would just pirate lots of it I'd love them. [laughs] Because what's in the middle of the game is an opportunity to buy stuff. I increasingly believe that's the way the market's going because that's how the consumer wants to consume. And by the way, [regarding] my competitor, do you think Blizzard gets upset when someone pirates a disc of one of their online games? While we don't want to see people pirate Warhammer Online, if they're going to give us a year's subscription it's not exactly a total loss."

This fits in perfectly with their recent Battleforge switch, which is now free to play, and gets its income from microtransactions.

Capitalism? What's capitalism? Never heard of it.