Sims 3 has lost $9m to piracy

Bloomberg reports that an illegal version of the game which hit the internet earlier this month was downloaded 180,000 times between its appearance on May 18th and May 21st.

To date this represents around $9m in lost sales – that is if you subscribe to the belief that every person who downloaded the game would have otherwise bought it at retail.

The numbers represent a faster illegal distribution rate than that suffered by EA’s Spore, a game that was named as the most pirated title of 2008.

At the time Spore’s high theft rate was pinned on EA’s controversial use of SecuROM DRM – a system it dropped for The Sim 3. The fact that the game has suffered to an even greater extent doesn’t reflect well on the pirate community, who claimed that their attack on Spore was an act of defiance against DRM.

“PC games are available before they are released,” Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson stated. “That’s the nature of the business these days. That’s an issue they have been dealing with for some time.”

EA has claimed that the leaked version of The Sims 3 does not represent the final code and is troubled with bugs – claims that users have reportedly dismissed.