New Report Says 'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Was Pirated More Than a Billion Times
"Game of Thrones" is undeniably one of the most successful TV series ever produced by HBO. However, a new report suggests that its latest season was pirated over a billion times in total.
A recent report from TorrentFreak showed that millions of "Game of Thrones" fans were tempted to illegally download each of the seven episodes of the show's season 7. Each of the airings was pirated at least 140 million times, which suggested that the entire season was pirated more than a billion times throughout its run.
The report claimed that most of the "views" of the popular series came from streaming sites that were not legally authorized by the producers of the show. The study found that fans also used private torrents instead of direct downloads and public torrents in obtaining copies of "Game of Thrones" episodes online.
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It can be recalled that some of the episodes of the seventh season were leaked ahead of their release after a group of hackers threatened to compromise HBO's security and allegedly made the episodes available online. Following an investigation of the case, it turned out that the leak was not carried out by the hackers but by the network itself, when HBO's overseas operations uploaded the episodes titled "The Spoils of War" and "Beyond the Wall" by accident. The illegal sharing of the "Game of Thrones" episodes was reportedly boosted by the said leaks.
Meanwhile, HBO reported that around 32 million viewers watched each episode of season 7 by legal means in the U.S. alone. This figure did not include the people who watched the series abroad through networks authorized by HBO.
The recent piracy figures of "Game of Thrones" show that despite HBO's efforts to clamp down on piracy, there is no stopping people from illegally downloading and sharing its episodes. That is yet another proof that the series is one of the most popular shows on TV today.
