EA-owned developer Maxis is finally underway on the development of The Sims 5, but there are some complications. Following playtests of the game’s ‘Project Rene’ vertical slice, the unfinished life simulator has been cracked, leaked and pirated.
The Sims 5 is currently years away from release, but EA has allowed trusted members to test the game early. However, that trust has been broken as the game spreads online in hacker circles.
Reported by Insider Gaming, the Project Rene test is already out in the wild. Furthermore, players are not connecting to EA servers, allowing them to play without fear of bans.
According to the report, the unfinished tech demo was easy to hack. Currently, the game’s prototype is running on Unreal Engine 5 instead of the series’ traditional custom engine. However, it’s not known if this will still be the case on release.
Due to its use of an unencrypted version of UE5, hackers were able to easily crack the prerelease software. The hackers were also able to generate access tokens for the playtest, giving them out for anyone to try the game.
The Sims 5 playtest was supposed to only be accessible to established EA playtesting members. However, those testers were able to add friends to play with them which led to hackers gaining access to the build.
‘Project Rene’ playtests are only a small slice of what the game will be. At the time of writing, the build only allows players to decorate an apartment with less restrictions than previous games.
This means that this is far from what the fifth Sims title will be upon release. There’s no character customisation, skills, vocations, et cetera. It’s simply a taste of what we can expect for the next game in the series.
Despite this, fans seem fairly positive on the upcoming game. According to the report, playtesters are loving the current build.
There’s currently no news on whether or not the game’s hacked build will be released publicly. While other leaked game builds, such as Dead Island 2, have been made public in the past, leaking The Sims 5 would definitely bring out litigation from EA that hackers would likely rather avoid.