Sims 3 leak was "demo program," says Riccitiello

The pirated version of The Sims 3 acted as a demo to some, EA boss John Riccitiello has joked. He's a funny guy.

"You identified our secret marketing campaign!" Riccitiello told IndustryGamers. "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" he elaborates. "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".

Sims 3 has beaten Spore as the most pirated game of all time, having been downloaded more than 200,000 times before it came out. There's more through there.

Thanks, Kotaku.