Top 10 Pirated games of 2008

bigdogchris

bigdogchris

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http://kotaku.com/5103673/spore-easily-leads-top-10-torrented-games-of-2008
http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204
Spore Easily Leads Top 10 Torrented Games of 2008
By Owen Good, 10:00 AM on Sun Dec 7 2008, 728 views

TorrentFreak put up a list of the top 10 games copied and shared over BitTorrent for the year 2008, and Spore, quite unsurprisingly, leads them all by a country mile.

Naturally, the hard feelings and retaliation over its DRM inclusion helped boost the number of torrents for this game, already downloaded half a million times by 10 days after its September release, and 1.7 million times as of now.

TorrentFreak insists its stats don't include downloads of malicious or malfunctioning torrents (a figure it puts at 1 percent of all available torrents). Spore's 1.7 million has it well in first. The Sims 2 was No. 2 with 1.15 million. The Sims 2 was released in 2004. Fallout 3's 645,000 downloads was the next highest among any 2008 game, good for eighth. Full list below.

1. Spore (1,700,000, released Sept. 2008)
2. The Sims 2 (1,150,000, Sept. 2004)
3. Assassins Creed (1,070,000, Nov. 2007)
4. Crysis (940,000, Nov. 2007)
5. Command & Conquer 3 (860,000, March 2007)
6. Call of Duty 4 (830,000, Nov. 2007)
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (740,000, June 2005)
8. Fallout 3 (645,000, Oct. 2008)
9. Far Cry 2 (585,000, Oct. 2008)
10. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (470,000, Oct. 2008)
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"EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn’t work, were buggy, or contained viruses. We wont deny that on badly moderated torrent sites, malicious torrents probably can be found."

So companies are punishing the many with their outrageous DRM, to stop the few that download and receive a virus infected, non-working, copy of a game. Thanks, but not thanks, that's punishment in inself. ;) Oh yeah, and your PC game prices suck too.
 
all games i don't feel like playing...interesting :p :rolleyes:

that and i already have GTA:SA from the Rockstar pack i bought from Steam awhile back (which happens to include 2 games that don't work in Vista: Manhunt and Midnight Club 2...neither of which they tell you about).
 
markt435 said:
that and i already have GTA:SA from the Rockstar pack i bought from Steam awhile back (which happens to include 2 games that don't work in Vista: Manhunt and Midnight Club 2...neither of which they tell you about).
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Thanks for the heads up! Maybe when I have the cash I can create a XP gaming rig...just like the old P3 Win98 gaming rig :) Though by that time, I bet someone will come out with VM 3D performance that is close to native.
 
Manhunt doesn't work in Vista?! WEEEEEEAAAAAKKKKK!!!!

I was just thinking yesterday about throwing severed heads at my enemies too...
 
Hopefully these numbers encourage all the big developers to pack up and go home. I am getting sick of buying 100% faster GPU's to play a slightly better looking game, and still be bored with its monotonous shit.
 
Less then 1 million for Crysis... So much for the 20 pirated copies per 1 bought theory.
 
I'm willing to bet by the end of the year GTA IV will be very high up on that list or at least on it.
 
The 1st one, Spore...was the MOST pirated??? WTF!!!! What am I missing with that game, whats cool about it? (granted I havent read nothing about it, TBH, I thought it was a game for kids)

The 10th one, Soccer. You have just GOT to be kidding me. I must be soooo far outta the loop for games cause I wouldnt have even given that game a thought if someone asked me "what do you think the 10 most pirated games are?"

If anything, I would think a Football game would have made the list. Im so far outta the loop, I cant even see the hole.
 
SAW said:
The 1st one, Spore...was the MOST pirated??? WTF!!!! What am I missing with that game, whats cool about it? (granted I havent read nothing about it, TBH, I thought it was a game for kids)
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Don't think it had anything to do with the game being good, it was more about sending EA a message.....i.e. go fuck yourselves you greedy pricks
 
defiant007 said:
Don't think it had anything to do with the game being good, it was more about sending EA a message.....i.e. go fuck yourselves you greedy pricks
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More like sending EA this message: "I don't trust you, so I'm going to pirate this game and MAYBE if I really love it I'll buy it when it's under $30."

Note: I haven't pirated Spore, mainly because a) I don't have a PC that will run it and b) I'd probably have bought it day 1 if I did. :)
 
SAW said:
The 10th one, Soccer. You have just GOT to be kidding me. I must be soooo far outta the loop for games cause I wouldnt have even given that game a thought if someone asked me "what do you think the 10 most pirated games are?"

If anything, I would think a Football game would have made the list. Im so far outta the loop, I cant even see the hole.
Click to expand...

That's not just a U.S. list. Go to any cyber cafe outside the Us and I bet every machine will have a pirated copy of PES or some other Soccer/Football game installed on it.
 
Damn there are a lot of thieves...a lot of thieves with really shitty taste in games.
 
SAW said:
The 1st one, Spore...was the MOST pirated??? WTF!!!! What am I missing with that game, whats cool about it? (granted I havent read nothing about it, TBH, I thought it was a game for kids)

The 10th one, Soccer. You have just GOT to be kidding me. I must be soooo far outta the loop for games cause I wouldnt have even given that game a thought if someone asked me "what do you think the 10 most pirated games are?"

If anything, I would think a Football game would have made the list. Im so far outta the loop, I cant even see the hole.
Click to expand...

Newsflash: There are people that live outside of the US, and almost no one outside the US likes American Football. Europe is all soccer, and Asia is mainly soccer as well. Middle East is 100 percent soccer as well.

I know this, because I lived for 14 years in Israel and 3 in Russia.

Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd see something else.
 
SAW said:
The 1st one, Spore...was the MOST pirated??? WTF!!!! What am I missing with that game, whats cool about it? (granted I havent read nothing about it, TBH, I thought it was a game for kids)

The 10th one, Soccer. You have just GOT to be kidding me. I must be soooo far outta the loop for games cause I wouldnt have even given that game a thought if someone asked me "what do you think the 10 most pirated games are?"

If anything, I would think a Football game would have made the list. Im so far outta the loop, I cant even see the hole.
Click to expand...

Tylerdurdened said:
Newsflash: There are people that live outside of the US, and almost no one outside the US likes American Football. Europe is all soccer, and Asia is mainly soccer as well. Middle East is 100 percent soccer as well.

I know this, because I lived for 14 years in Israel and 3 in Russia.

Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd see something else.
Click to expand...


That, and us football guys like our XBOX 360 madden :)
 
WarriorX said:
Less then 1 million for Crysis... So much for the 20 pirated copies per 1 bought theory.
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Taking a wild guess here, but it says these numbers are for 2008, and the greatest number of downloads usually happens right after release, which was late 07 for Crysis. Add that in the first 3 weeks after release it only sold 80k copies, and that people who pirate will often share with friends, and 20 to 1 starts to sound more reasonable (at the time).
 
Tylerdurdened said:
Newsflash: There are people that live outside of the US, and almost no one outside the US likes American Football. Europe is all soccer, and Asia is mainly soccer as well. Middle East is 100 percent soccer as well.

I know this, because I lived for 14 years in Israel and 3 in Russia.

Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd see something else.
Click to expand...

Why are you being rude to me? The OP didnt mention this was a list WORLD WIDE.

Shmuck!!
 
You have to wonder if everyone downloaded spore to get a DRM-free version or out of spite BECAUSE of it's high DRM :rolleyes:
 
The amount of piracy is likely to be related closely to the actual interest in the game to start with, Spore is a big name seller and was pirated a lot, it's hardly a surprise.

As for complete numbers, this wont be anywhere close, piracy extends way past just 1-2 tracker sites, there are still many other places to get this stuff other than P2P networks which are a bit more "underground" but still have a lot of users downloading.
 
So many people require their hands cut off.

What i would be intested in is how many of those downloads for different games are the same people.

Is the 600'000 who downloaded one game, the same 600'000 who downloaded others?
 
Source is off of Bittorrent trackers according to that site. Should be low margin of error. Numbers are probably even more than that since it doesn't account for other illegal sources outside of torrents.
 
If my computer could play them I would definately test like 2 of those games...
 
It'll probably be GTA IV at number 1 by the end of 2008.

Rockstar have totally alienated us paying customers with its horrible DRM, activation, Securom, Social Club, .Net Framework. No wonder the no securom crack is popular, a 28kb file that eliminated it. Why did Rockstar even bother wasting time and resources on it?
 
Tylerdurdened said:
Newsflash: There are people that live outside of the US, and almost no one outside the US likes American Football. Europe is all soccer, and Asia is mainly soccer as well. Middle East is 100 percent soccer as well.

I know this, because I lived for 14 years in Israel and 3 in Russia.

Maybe if you pulled your head out of your ass you'd see something else.
Click to expand...

Geez, take it easy on the guy. Not everyone has YOUR life experiences.

BTW I spent many years in Europe and American style football is STARTING to take hold there.
 
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (740,000, June 2005)

740,000 people downloading a 3 year old game???

Might have to get this game myself.
 
Now if they could track those downloads to the individuals and prosecute their thieving asses,those numbers would be significantly less by 2010!!:cool:
 
g1xx3r said:
Now if they could track those downloads to the individuals and prosecute their thieving asses,those numbers would be significantly less by 2010!!:cool:
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Some of them (who knows what percentage) may have not necessarily broken any laws in their country of origin, so there'd be absolutely nothing to prosecute them for.

Stateside, none could be prosecuted for theft :)

 
Chombo said:
Thats what I was thinking. I remember them stating that number.
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Their numbers are just from one of the torrent trackers. Now if they combined the numbers from all the popular torrent sites Im sure the number will grow a lot higher.
 
DeadSkull said:
Their numbers are just from one of the torrent trackers. Now if they combined the numbers from all the popular torrent sites Im sure the number will grow a lot higher.
Click to expand...

Well, even if it was 10x larger than whats stated, it would still fall well short of the 20:1 ratio Crytek stated.
 
bigdogchris said:
to stop the few that download and receive a virus infected, non-working, copy of a game
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Never had no virus infected and non-working at the same time. :confused:
 
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