Game of Thrones Season 8 caused a surge in global piracy
The final season of Game of Thrones caused an alarmingly massive shift in global piracy traffic.
It’s common knowledge Game of Thrones is a heavily pirated show. But it actually managed to reverse a global trend, where the number of visitors going to global torrent websites had been declining for more than a year.
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Image Credit: MUSO
According to a new report from MUSO (via TorrentFreak), visits to piracy sites pivoted from an ongoing decline to surge above 600million visits in April of 2019.
While the report doesn’t name Game of Thrones, all signs point to the final season of the show being the cause. The surge in visits was primarily video content rather than music piracy and the surge began around the time of the 14th of April – the date of the premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones.
On the day of the premiere, the number of visits jumped up by around 45 million compared to the week before with a jump occurring each week on the day of an episode. Overall, Game of Thrones appears to have accounted for a rise of around 8% of global piracy traffic.
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Some of the decline of visitors to piracy sites has been attributed to the rise of legal video streaming services. Viewers of sites like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix has risen sharply over a three-year period while piracy site visitors have declined sharply in the same period.
The Game of Thrones TV series may be over but George R.R. Martin has still got plenty on. Along with finishing The Winds of Winter and being involved with prequel TV series The Long Night, Martin is collaborating with acclaimed games studio FromSoftware.
Martin is working with the creators of Bloodborne and Dark Souls series to create a new fantasy RPG named Elden Ring.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.