It has been brought to light that a very reliable source has confirmed that Sims 5 has been hacked, pirated, and leaked to the public earlier than anticipated. EA has voiced its opinion on the matter, and needless to say, they are not happy with the events that transpired during their playtest.
Playtests are a vital part of game development, as they allow an outside view of the game in its most raw form. With the help of playtesters, developers are able to take feedback about the game and tweak it to the best of their ability before release. Usually, playtests are kept in a box, so to speak, meaning that they are handed out to those who know how to keep information about the game to themselves, and be a reliable part of a development team. With that said, the Sims 5 playtest was very open, as those who were invited to test the game out prior to release were allowed to invite up to three others to playtest the game as well.
While this is not a bad thing, as it gets more eyes on the content and more feedback, it has turned out to be EA's worst nightmare. The playtest began on October 25, 2022, and EA believes that the ability to invite others is the cause of these leaks and pirating. Sources also claim that those who are involved in the leaks were not even invited to the initial playtest, and somehow bypassed EA's servers and were able to hack the game to allow others to connect to it.
The sources that revealed to Insider Gaming that the game was not only being hacked but pirated as well, have wished to remain anonymous but according to these sources, hackers were able to generate access to the game using tokens. These generated tokens allowed those without any form of permission from EA to access the game, all while flying under EA's radar as they are not directly connected to the dev's servers. This hack is the first and only Sims leak in history and is absolutely detrimental to not only the development of the game but to the release as well.
