Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are among the top shows that are pirated by TV viewers.
The annual piracy lists have begun to be published with the first one taking into consideration the most pirated TV series of the year. TorrentFreak published the results which indicates piracy figures for TV episodes are down on last year. Though Game of Thrones had a shorten season.
However these numbers are from public BitTorrent trackers and several other sources for the site. Online streaming and downloads from filelocker services are not included since there are no public sources to draw data from, so total piracy numbers are much harder to calculate.
Game of Thrones has consistently broken a lot of records. Most seasons, it notches higher ratings than it had the year before, and last year, its season 7 premiere drew the largest audience of any premiere to date. The series has broken records for the highest ratings of any HBO show in the network’s history.
Over the years, the dynamics of Game of Thrones piracy have changed, with the arrival and growing popularity of HBO Go, HBO Now, and another avenues for legal streaming of the network’s shows, which have eliminated the justification by some pirates that the lack of an HBO subscription left them with no choice. Changes in the ease and availability of pirating technology, as well as faster download speeds, have also changed the dynamics over time.
Game of Thrones remained the clear favorite of piracy with the big budget fantasy series winning the title for a sixth year in a row. Rick and Morty and the Prison Break revival were new to the top ten this year with Westworld and Lucifer dropping out. The Top 10 are:
1. “Game of Thrones”
2. “The Walking Dead”
3. “The Flash”
4. “The Big Bang Theory”
5. “Rick and Morty”
6. “Prison Break”
7. “Sherlock”
8. “Vikings”
9. “Suits”
10. “Arrow”
George R.R. Martin’s best-selling book series “A Song of Ice and Fire” is brought to the screen as HBO sinks its considerable storytelling teeth into the medieval fantasy epic. It’s the depiction of two powerful families — kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and honest men — playing a deadly game for control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and to sit atop the Iron Throne. Martin is credited as a co-executive producer and one of the writers for the series, which was filmed in Northern Ireland and Malta.
Based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman, this gritty drama portrays life in the weeks and months following a zombie apocalypse. Led by police officer Rick Grimes, his family and a group of other survivors find themselves constantly on the move in search of a safe and secure home. But the pressure each day to stay alive sends many in the group to the deepest depths of human cruelty, and Rick discovers that the overwhelming fear of the survivors can be more deadly than the zombies walking among them.
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Photo Credit: HBO