GZ: How does Sims 3: Ambitions tackle the problem of piracy and DRM?
GR: I remember reading the boards the other day and one guy was talking about the stylist career and how much he enjoyed playing it in Indonesia. Whether he was full of crap or serious, this was weeks ago and the game is only just coming out. I thought that was kind of funny and sad at the same time. People do pirate our games, it's a reality. Our approach with this game is lets back off the DRM (Digital Rights Management), we have a disc check and that's it.
Basically we want to reward our paying customers with light DRM, a good price and we'll give you great stuff. You have Riverview if you register the game, and you get free updates which you can only get via registering, it takes months of our time to build this exclusive content. For World Adventures we had extra decorative items for your home and you have a bunch of new objects for this game as well. Hopefully this philosophy of nurture not punish will pay off and if players help us out and support our game then we'll do our best to support them. We can't stop the piracy, it's maddening to me. It's theft and that is all it is, but we'll still try to support players.