I will update as more news comes. Feel free to let me now if you found some info.

Hell hath frozen over?

I would wager a guess it's half experiment, half realization that Sims 3 is not really the kind of game pirates are really targeting so all you'd have is a bunch of pissed off parents and the game for their kids.

An experiment? Maybe, but I hope it's successful.

Good, now if only they'll take a page from Egosoft's playbook and make that retroactive on previous titles.  As I alluded to in another thread, I chose Sins over Mass Effect because I'm not paying retail price for a rental game.

Egosoft? Don't you mean Ubisoft?

Egosoft went back and removed the DRM for X3 post release.

This is good. Hopefully EA keeps it up, trims their bureaucracy (!), vastly improves their customer service, and dispenses with things such as the *necessity* of logging in to official online servers to play your games.

Credit where credit is due.

Frogboy and company have shaken things up and made a mark.

That's good to know.  I have a friend that loves the Sims, but he would have never purchased it with harsh DRM stuff on it.

I guess this is a result of the filed suits concerning the DRM on Mass Effect, Spore and so on. Namely trying to prevent more suits.

I don't belive this. I think that EA is just bull shiting us.

Actually that was also MY first thought. 

A lot of it is probably purely financial as well. The Sims franchise has been one of the best selling in history, so Sims 3 is expected many, many copies. SecuROM charges per disk. I don't know if it's a flat rate or dependant on which features you want, but if it's not a flat rate I can definitely see them scaling back. If the difference is $1 per disk and they sell 10 million copies, that's not really pocket change even for EA in these times. And it'll sell a lot more than 10 million.

i wonder why they pick Sims 3....    it's obviously a test of some sort...  but what type....  

is it....

- to prevent more suits like those of previous games "see Star Adder 's  reply #11"

- a test that checks the popularity of sims,  and possible work on Sims 4 should it be succesfull "sims 2 was without online activation, having the Sims 3 without online activation aswell gives a better few op popularity"

- a more ... sneaky... test that looks at selling-numbers, to see if removed DRM actualy  increases sales...

frankly i cant believe EA doing this...   if the release date was April 1st  i'd be convinced it was a joke..