The tv adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire saga, Game of Thrones, is arguably the most watched show on the planet. TorrentFreak has reported that the season finale for season 4 of the show has yet again broken records for the most shared file in the world, with 254,114 people sharing a single file at the same time. The previous record was also held by Game of Thrones for the “Red Wedding” episode with a little over 200,000 sharing at the same time.
Data collected showed that the file was downloaded about 1.5 million times in the first 12 hours, which translates into 2,000 terabytes downloaded in half a day. TorrentFreak expects this number to reach 7.5 million in the coming weeks. This is not an insignificant amount; and the locations which have been torrenting the show paint a very interesting picture.
Despite being available in America, Australia, and the UK, these countries have been revealed to have large numbers of people torrenting the show. This may be due to the fact that watching Game of Thrones in those countries requires a cable subscription, which not many people want to pay for to watch a single programme. Brazil and France, however, topped the countries that downloaded the season finale; although TorrentFreak did not provide a breakdown of the numbers.
Piracy is considered a problem by many broadcasting companies, and these numbers are not helped by the fact that the entire season is available for purchase over iTunes in many countries. However, HBO programming boss Michael Lombardo considered the massive pirating over last season’s Red Wedding a compliment of sorts; maybe he will take this news with the same positive outlook.
[Source: TorrentFreak]
