Game of Thrones has been an incredibly popular television program, both with legitimate subscribers to HBO and with those who obtain the latest episodes through torrents. The fifth season finale, aired on Sunday night, has broken a couple of records for piracy. There were 1.5 million copies of this episode downloaded within 8 hours, and the total number of downloads is expected to top 10 million later this week.
Piracy figures for the entire season have been higher this year, not just this last episode. For past seasons, HBO didn't seem to concerned with torrents, but they issued some warnings earlier this year to downloaders. This may be because HBO has begun their own online streaming service, called HBO Now.
An updated report shows that the individual swarm record has also been broken by the fifth season finale. At 7:45PM CET, there were 258,131 people sharing a single torrent.
I'm a bit surprised that so many chose the 480p version, rather than the better quality 720p and 1080p copies that are also widely available through torrent sites. Speed of the download process is apparently more important.
You can read more on the story at TorrentFreak.
