The Game of Thrones season four finale “The Children” has become the most pirated show in history, according to data from TorrentFreak.
Legally, according to official US ratings, 7.1 million people tuned in for the final episode. However in pirate world, a few hours after the episode appeared online, Demonii tracker reported that 254,114 people were sharing that one torrent at the same time – the highest ever.
Downloaders took interest in the HD torrent too, with 108,539 users downloading the 720p copy and 23,922 downloading the 1080p copy.
Within 12 hours, the season finale has been downloaded 1.5 millon times, which TorrentFreak says is “close to 2,000 terabytes transferred in half a day.” It also expects the download total to exceed 7.5 million in the coming weeks, which would make it the most downloaded episode of the year.
Despite being legally available in most English speaking countries, illegal downloads of the show are still popular the US, Australia and the UK. However, Brazil and France topped the list with the most illegal downloads of the show, according to an Irdeto report from earlier this year.
Game of Thrones has form in this area. Back in May, episode “First of his Name” also surpassed 200,000 downloads of a single torrent at one time. In 2013, it was also last year’s most downloaded TV show, with the finale “The Red Wedding” being pirated 5.9 million times.
Source: Forbes.com