In an unofficial race for the dubious honor of most pirated game, Electronic Arts' Spore has toppled the competition, amassing a rather impressive 1.7 million illicit downloads since its September rele.
The list, compiled by BitTorrent news site TorrentFreak, is comprised of data acquired from "a representative sample of BitTorrent sites." While it isn't necessarily a scientific survey, it does provide a relatively accurate view of what software pirates were up to this year.
Is Spore's success on the piracy charts related to its
unpopular DRM? TorrentFreak seems to think so. The game was reportedly downloaded 500,000 times within the first ten days of release, a trend that apparently never died down.In 8th place with a meager 645,000 downloads is Fallout 3, joining Far Cry 2 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 as the only other games from 2008 that even made the list. No intrusive DRM, less piracy? Maybe so.
Image courtesy EA
Top 10 Most Pirated Games of 2008 [TorrentFreak]
Spore 2008's Most Pirated Game, Says TorrentFreak | Game | Life from Wired.com