'Game of Thrones' Is the Most Pirated TV Show for the Fourth Year in a Row
Confess: Did you pay to see Jon Snow ("Game of Thrones" Season 5 finale, or did you illegally download that action? Something in between, perhaps? According to "The Walking Dead." This isn't really the kind of battle you want to win, but ... screw it, it's still a win.
Overall, "Game of Thrones" was the most pirated TV show of 2015; that's the HBO series's fourth year in a row with the title. (Congrats?)
Here are the top 10 most downloaded TV shows on BitTorrent for 2015:
1. "Game of Thrones": 14,400,000
2. "The Walking Dead": 6,900,000
3. "The Big Bang Theory": 4,400,000
4. "Arrow": 3,900,000
5. "The Flash": 3,600,000
6. "Mr. Robot": 3,500,000
7. "Vikings": 3,300,000
8. "Supergirl": 3,000,000
9. "The Blacklist": 2,900,000
10. "Suits": 2,600,000
As you can see, GoT had way more downloads than any other show, which may not be too surprising considering it's on a premium cable station and some people can't/won't pay for it but they refuse to live without it anyway, so they go the illegal route. TorrentFreak said more than half of the downloads happened in the first week after the show aired, so people probably wanted to get ahead of the spoilers or maybe they read something about the episodes that made them want to see for themselves right away. GoT will probably be on this list next year too, even though HBO keeps trying to find new ways to get people to watch the show legally; earlier in 2015 the show broke an all-time piracy record, TF noted, when more than 258,131 people shared the same torrent file simultaneously.
Did you pirate any shows this year? If so, do your Cersei walk of shame for penance!
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