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Spore leads top 10 list of most pirated games

by Steven Williamson on 10 December 2008, 12:56

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Here's some statistics that'll make developers shudder! TorrentFreak has carried out some research into the most downloaded games via BitTorrent and it makes for some interesting reading.

Top of the list is the life simulation game Spore, which has had a staggering 1,700,000 downloads since its launch in September 2008. In second place is The Sims 2 with 1,150,000 downloads finishing the top three and also topping the million mark is Assassin's Creed with 1,070,000 downloads.

Check out the top 10 list at Torrent-Freak


HEXUS Forums :: 16 Comments

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Posted by Betty_Swallocks - Wed 10 Dec 2008 13:34
Yes, all that DRM was ever so effective, wasn't it?
Posted by finlay666 - Wed 10 Dec 2008 14:09
I think a lot of the problem is the perception that its an ok thing to do drm or not, look at world of goo, 90+% piracy rate they reckon, a similar amount for the other game the company released that did have drm so it doesn't make a huge difference.
Posted by kalniel - Wed 10 Dec 2008 14:11
I thought it'd be way more than that actually - for such a popular game. It's fairly obvious that the more popular a game is the more people will download it, so I guess DRM is doing something if it's keeping the numbers down.
Posted by Bleak - Wed 10 Dec 2008 15:59
DRM (newer versions of Securom) is also to keep down the number of 2nd hand sales of games as much as anything.

Rather than total number of downloads it would be more interesting to know the ratio between purchases:downloads on games. Also how many people who downloaded the game went out to buy it afterwards.

Without those sorts of figures the total downloads doesn't really mean anything other than the game was popular, which we already knew.
Posted by Barrichello - Wed 10 Dec 2008 18:49
The site reported 1.7m illegal downloads of Spore since the game was released in September 2008.

Electronic Arts (EA) said it sold nearly 2m copies of the game.

TorrentFreak said that Spore's Digital Rights Management (DRM) software - which came in for considerable criticism when the game was released - was one of the reasons the game was so prolifically pirated.

Sounds about right.

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