The Sims 5 Barely Entered Testing and Already has Pirate Problem
Pirating of a video game before its release is no mean feat. Unless, as in the case of Electronic Arts and the new The Sims, the developers invite the wrong people for testing.
Few publishers are ok with pirating of their games after release, but in the case of Electronic Arts the problem has gone to a whole other level. The new The Sims was cracked not only before its debut, but even before the official announcement.
Project Rene - because for now that's the game's title, eventually to become The Sims 5 - was by no means stolen directly from the developer, as was the case with GTA 6. On October 25, a pre-alpha version of the game was made available to selected players as part of the EA Playtesting program.
Participants could also invite up to three friends to play. Arguably, one of the people wo took up the offer is responsible for leaking the game and sharing it.
According to sources reached byInsider Gaming cracking the game was trivial. The current version of Project Rene is virtually unencrypted and runs on the popular (read: well-known to hackers) Unreal Engine (perhaps temporarily). As a result, pirates had little problem running the game without connecting to EA's servers.
Of course, the hackers released a very early version of the game. The Sims 5 (because that will probably be the title of the new installment of this popular series) doesn't even have an approximate release date yet, and before its debut on the market a lot will probably change in gameplay.
The question is, will EA be as eager to invite players to early testing after such a fiasco?
