They haven't blamed piracy and they've made a game that I like more than I should probably admit - I usually only like the building aspect of The Sims but to be honest, I've hardly touched that yet. It's got that one more turn quality, I find it hard to put down. It's released in good shape with plenty of content except for only having one town included on the DVD. I think you can download the other town and keep a copy or put it on a USB pen and copy it to a standalone machine. The downloadable town doesn't look as interesting anyway. It doesn't have bad DRM as far as I know. It's CTD'ed a couple of times and the AI has some annoying tendencies for path finding and doing things slowly (why do they pick up all the plates and wash them at once, yet put old newspapers in the bin one-by-one?).
On the whole, it's a good game with just minor flaws. The online system is good, and also ignorable if you really want. There's a lot of content even if it is just one town.
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Wow. I just came out in support of EA and The Sims. There's a first time for everything!