There is no doubt that next to AMC’s The Walking Dead, one of the most popular TV shows of all time is the small screen adaptation of George R.R Martin’s hugely successful Song of Fire and Ice books, Game of Thrones.
This weekend, the first four episodes of season five got leaked online and set a piracy world record.
According to TorrentFreak, within a couple of hours after the leaked footage started to make an online appearance, 135 000 people were sharing a single torrent for the first episode. The site also notes that within the first 24 hours, the file was downloaded over a million times.
“The other three episodes are hovering around a million downloads as well, and that’s only via public torrent sites. The piracy totals will most likely double if the totals of streaming and direct download sites are added,” it wrote.
This leak is probably the most prominent so far, but it pales in comparison to last year’s leak of the second episode of Game of Thrones’ fourth season. At the time, more than 254 114 people shared a single copy, which resulted in 1.5 million downloads in the first 24 hours.
Where are the most copies being downloaded from? It seems like the British just can’t get enough of Game of Thrones.
TorrentFreak did some digging and sampled 21 445 IP addresses over the course of the first 24 hours to see where the most downloaders are based. Have a look at its chart below:
[Source and chart – TorrentFreak]
