Season 7 of HBOs insanely popular television series Game of Thrones (GoT) has now been pirated over a billion times, says one piracy monitoring firm.
Muso, a firm responsible for protecting and tracking pirated content released the staggering numbers earlier today. It’s difficult to track pirated content with anything resembling accurate results, but after a rough patch for HBO throughout the series’ seventh season, it’s easy to see how it could happen.
Andy Chatterly, CEO and Co-Founder of Muso told Torrent Freak:
It’s no secret that HBO has been plagued by security breaches throughout the latest season, which has seen some episodes leak before broadcast and added to unlicensed activity. In addition to the scale of piracy when it comes to popular shows, these numbers demonstrate that unlicensed streaming can be a far more significant type of piracy than torrent downloads.
To further break it down, Muso’s numbers suggest each episode of GoT was pirated 140 million times. That’s a stark contrast to the 32 million times each episode was viewed legally.
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And if you think torrent sites like The Pirate Bay are to blame, think again. Only 9 percent of the pirated views came from torrents. 85 percent came from illegal streams. Rounding out the piracy trifecta, direct downloads accounted for some 6 percent of illegal views.
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