Spore Becomes Most Pirated Game in History

Final8y

Final8y

Final8y

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As 2008 is slowly moving toward its end, we start taking a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. First up are games. As expected, Spore is by far the most downloaded game on BitTorrent, in part thanks to the DRM that came with the game.
Traditionally, games can’t compete with the most pirated movies and TV-shows in actual download numbers, but Spore came very close this year.

Only 10 days after the game’s launch date, already half a million people had downloaded the game. During the months after that, another million people obtained a copy of the game via BitTorrent. According to our estimates, Spore was downloaded 1.7 million times since early September, a record breaking figure for a game.

When we posted about the impressive download rate on Spore - inflated due to the DRM that was put into the game - EA doubted our statistics. EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn’t work, were buggy, or contained viruses. We wont deny that on badly moderated torrent sites, malicious torrents probably can be found. However, this constitutes less than 1% of the available torrents, and they are not added to our statistics.

Below is the list of the 10 most downloaded (PC) games on BitTorrent in 2008, with an estimated download count for each. In second place we see The Sims 2, also from the hands of Spore creator Will Wright. Assassins Creed completes the top 3 with just over a million downloads.
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game downloads released
torrentfreak.com
1 Spore (1,700,000) (Sept. 2008)
2 The Sims 2 (1,150,000) (Sept. 2004)
3 Assassins Creed (1,070,000) (Nov. 2007)
4 Crysis (940,000) (Nov. 2007)
5 Command & Conquer 3 (860,000) (Mar. 2007)
6 Call of Duty 4 (830,000) (Nov. 2007)
7 GTA San Andreas (740,000) (Jun. 2005)
8 Fallout 3 (645,000) (Oct. 2008)
9 Far Cry 2 (585,000) (Oct. 2008)
10 Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (470,000) (Oct. 2008)
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http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/
 
re

most pirated game ever?i doubt it...commodore 64 has sold over 350 million units worldwide,i dont hink that kind of sales will ever be reached again, it is still being in used in other countries...i reckon most pirated game is probably on one of those....cassette is easy to copy....and its cheap for people in the third world and is easily the best 8bit computer :)
 
re

most pirated game ever?i doubt it...commodore 64 has sold over 350 million units worldwide,i dont think those kind of sales will ever be reached again, it is still being in used in other countries...i reckon most pirated game is probably on one of those....cassette is easy to copy....and its cheap for people in the third world and is easily the best 8bit computer with over 15000 programs for it :)
 
1.7 million - that's shocking, and rather upsetting.

To think that if even a tenth would have bought the game, at say £20, that's £3.4million that the pub/devs are short. Assuming my maths isn't retarded.

Sickening, tbh.
 
Tbh it's not upsetting imo, it's a poor game by all means and it's not like EA deserves to get pat on the back for it, let this be a lesson for them that poor games do not sell enough... Doesn't it have this install limit ? I'm amazed it's only 1.7 million though, expected it more to be around 5 million or so.

Ignoring all that though, it's not like it's out of sale yet, people will buy it for the coming 5 years...
 
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shame to see COD 4 and fallout 3 in that list.
im glad C&C 3 is up there though. them are their sucky install limitations
 
Disappointed to see Crysis there (though not suprised), especially considering its one of two games on that list to have put a demo out before release. More developers need to follow that trend imo. Then again, had they done that, would so many people have purchased Spore?
 
snowdog said:
Tbh it's not upsetting imo, it's a poor game by all means and it's not like EA deserves to get pat on the back for it, let this be a lesson for them than poor games do not sell enough... Doesn't it have this install limit ? I'm amazed it's only 1.7 million though, expected it more to be around 5 million or so.
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Spot on mate. Completely agree.

The game was terrible. I would have wasted £30 on that tripe.
 
naffa said:
No, Spore is the most pirated game ever as far as I know.
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Just looking at those stats, unless there was some reason The Sims 2 was a popular download this year, I'd bet that easily tops Spore for the amount of downloads throughout its lifetime.
 
Teki187 said:
Spot on mate. Completely agree.

The game was terrible. I would have wasted £30 on that tripe.
Click to expand...

That raises an interesting point. As EA can legally demand money off us for games we pirate, can we demand money back off them for what we wasted on Spore? :p
 
It's upsetting that it has been pirated so much, but it does go to show that the DRM put in place was a waste of time.

Ubisoft seem to have learned this now as the new POP game is being released without the DRM if I remember what I read else where. This is one of the reasons I am going to buy POP just to help improve the sales for none DRM games.

I didn't even buy or download spore becasue of the DRM and the views of people that brought it here. May pick it up once I can get it for under £20 later next year.
 
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