P2P monitoring website Torrentfreak has released its figures for 2009, showing us the top five titles per platform pirates were particularly into.
First we'll start with the Xbox 360, which had the lowest number of downloads overall, although still disconcertingly high.
1 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (970,000) (Nov. 2009)
2 Street Fighter IV (840,000) (July. 2009)
3 Prototype (810,000) (Feb. 2009)
4 Dirt 2 (790,000) (Sept. 2009)
5 UFC 2009 Undisputed (720,000) (Mar. 2009)
It's worth nothing of course Modern Warfare 2 came out only recently, but managed to beat out all other titles in the span of about one month, whereas the rest had six months or more to reach their peak.
Next up we have the Wii, in second overall.
1 New Super Mario Bros. (1,150,000) (Nov. 2009)
2 Punch-Out!! (950,000) (May. 2009)
3 Wii Sports Resort (920,000) (July. 2009)
4 The House of the Dead: Overkill (860,000) (Feb. 2009)
5 Mario Power Tennis (830,000) (Mar. 2009)
Four of the titles are Nintendo releases, for which no doubt the company will be or already is fighting, as they are known to. Who would've thought so many "hardcore" fans from the 80s would've grown up to be pirates?
The last title, quite interestingly, is Sega's House of the Dead: Overkill. For all the talk of violent games not being popular on the Wii, the 860,000 figure alone refutes any claims of interest, there. Sega has previously stated sales were "as expected" -- just imagine the effect it would've had if each of those pirates had actually bought the title.
Last up is the PC, certainly the most notorious platform for piracy. Appropriately, downloads are three times as large in quantity, which goes to show you just how many PC gamers are out there, be they pirates or paying players (to put it in perspective: MW2 sold 4.7 million units on launch day).
1 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (4,100,000) (Nov. 2009)
2 The Sims 3 (3,200,000) (June. 2009)
3 Prototype (2,350,000) (June. 2009)
4 Need For Speed Shift (2,100,000) (Sept. 2009)
5 Street Fighter IV (1,850,000) (July. 2009)
These stats are the most interesting of all. First, we see that despite an at least partly failed boycott on MW2, a very large number of pirates saw fit to download the game free instead of paying (not to say some of them didn't purchase afterwards).
The other interesting note is both The Sims 3 and Need for Speed SHIFT were torrented extensively, though neither title had any DRM (and SHIFT had a demo), which, as usual, shows you the majority of people don't care about the stuff one way or the other.
The number five most pirated PC game is Street Fighter IV. All we have to say about that one is if you are one of the people that pirated it: go legit, as it's a great version that deserves to be supported, particularly with the disparaging number of fighters on the platform.
As usual, the PS3 remains virtually untouched for a variety of reasons -- you have to give Sony some credit there.
On the whole Modern Warfare 2 is by far the most pirated title of this last year, besting 2008's Spore by more than double, though we're sure Activision isn't too hurt about it, what with the more than half billion dollars in sales and all.
Source:Torrentfreak
Sections:Microsoft Consoles, Console Games, PC Games, Nintendo Consoles
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