Venice Unleashed (Battlefield 3)

I understand that angry comments will be pouring in now, they say "buy litsuha, bum stupid" and stuff like that, but nevertheless ... I stumbled upon the ZloEmu emulator, it didn't work out normally due to high ping. Began to google further, came across venice.
Question: in order to play it, do you need only an official client or is there an option to connect through pirates?