A favourite amongst cyberthieves.
TorrentFreak has issued its list of the most pirated video games of 2011, and it turns out first-person shooter Crysis 2 is a pirate’s preferred booty. With 3,920,000 downloads for PC, people are pilfering from Electronic Arts like it was a 7-Eleven in a sketchy neigbourhood.
Top five PC, Wii and Xbox titles after the jump. No PS3, though, as TorrentFreak says it gets “considerably less download” than other systems. Us PS3 players are real law-abiding citizens, you see. We’re what you call “lawful good.” But you PC gamers out there get up to more thievery than my wood elf in Skyrim. Tisk tisk.
PC
1. Crysis 2, with 3,920,000 downloads, released March 2011
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, with 3,650,000 downloads, released November 2011
3. Battlefield 3, with 3,510,000 downloads, released October 2011
4. FIFA 12, with 3,390,000, released Sept. 2011
5. Portal 2, with 3,240,000 downloads, released April 2011
Wii
1. Super Mario Galaxy 2, with 1,280,000 downloads, released May 2010
2. Mario Sports Mix, with 1,090,000 downloads, released February 2011
3. Xenoblade Chronicles, with 950,000 downloads, released August 201
4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, with 870,000 downloads, released May 2011
5. FIFA 12, with 860,000 downloads, released September 2011
Xbox 360
1. Gears of War 3, with 890,000 downloads, released September 2011
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, with downloads 830,000, released November 2011
3. Battlefield 3, with 760,000 downloads, released October 2011
4. Forza Motorsport 4, with 720,000 downloads, released October 2011
5. Kinect Sports: Season Two, with 690,000 downloads, released October 2011
Categories: General
The solution to this is to make all games free and make them pay to play. That way you would have to produce good products to get people to play it and continue to play it.
The question that really needs to be answered is: how many of the games “pirated” for the PC were downloaded even though the person owns a legitimate copy of the game, but wanted to install it without all the DRM crap that infests all of EA’s games?
PS3 owners are no more law abiding than the rest. Sony just locked up their firmware and made it way more difficult to rip any games on their consoles.
Pirating games, movies and music is just a reality of life. I love downloaded movies but always pay for video games when a new one comes out. Alot of my games are bought second hand…is that not also a form of sharing. Many pirated games were bought then uploaded so I fail to see the difference in downloading from someone and buying second hand.
What a joke. There is no way one can determine how many times a game or movie has been pirated. There are no cash register receipts, no HST receipts, no records of any kind in the “pirate” world. There are literally thousands of places one can obtain software. None of these places produce records of activity. Thus, there is no way whatsoever to produce a number with any degree of credibility.
This list is like seeing a man sneeze and concluding that a worldwide epidemic is breaking out based on one observation.
Piracy may or may not be a big issue. But it can only be addressed if you fairly and accurately assess the situation. When numbers are outright fabricated like they have done here, the complaintant begins to lack credibility.
id like to point out the fact crysis 2 is apparently #1 most pirated is because a lot of gamers still use CryTek’s CRYEngine for benchmarking there PC builds, that’s not to say people didn’t download this game to play but that said im fairly certain that half those downloads were due to people wanting to test out there systems first before any purchases
I hope I’m not the complainant you’re referring to. My tisk tisks were for the lulz only.
Phredator, You have no idea what your talking about. this estimate is very accurate, considering, its quite easy to track torrents, and since torrentfreak does exactly that, thier estimates are accurate.
Once the corporate world starts to socialize the profits for the taxpayers (that have to socialize the losses) I have no sympathy when big companies cry piracy.
Brandon…
There are endless examples of products available now without funding from a pay per play format and are thriving from revenue on physical sales.
Been to an Arcade lately?
Maybe you can explain how the games would be “free”?