The BBC reports that Electronic Arts has confirmed that its next version of The Sims will be DRM-free.
EA ‘Dumps DRM’ for Next Sims Game
March 31, 2009
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Law Bytes
Episode 278: Ben Waldman on Gander Social and the Challenges of Building a Sovereign Social Network
byMichael Geist

August 10, 2026
Michael Geist
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The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 278: Ben Waldman on Gander Social and the Challenges of Building a Sovereign Social Network

Playing with definitions
What they seems to mean is “won’t talk to an authorisation server”. From that article:
“The Sims division head, Ron Humble, said the game would use traditional serial code copy protection”, “The game will have disc-based copy protection”, “There is always going to be a level of protection for games and this solution [DRM free] is right for The Sims 3.”.
I guess it all comes down to how you define “Digital Rights Management”, but to me, it sounds like they are still using DRM, just a somewhat less customer-antagonistic version.