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Report: Crysis 2 named most-pirated game of 2011

Data from download tracker TorrentFreak.com shows the PC version of EA and Crytek's Crysis 2 was the most pirated video game of 2011, with more than 3.92 million confirmed BitTorrent downloads.

Tom Curtis, Blogger

January 3, 2012

2 Min Read
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Data from download tracker TorrentFreak.com shows the PC version of EA and Crytek's Crysis 2 was the most pirated video game of 2011, with more than 3.92 million confirmed BitTorrent downloads as of December 30, 2011. This total falls just shy of the downloads accumulated by last year's top game, Call of Duty: Black Ops, which saw more than 4.1 confirmed downloads between its November 2010 launch and December of that year. By comparison, Crysis 2 launched in March, and thus had much more time to reach such a high number of downloads. More than a month before the game's release, an advance copy of Crysis 2 leaked online, and while tens of thousands of users pirated the game ahead of its launch, TorrentFreak confirms the bulk of its near 4 million downloads occurred once the game hit shelves. Illegal downloads for the multiplatform shooter outpaced those of other popular games in the genre, such as Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and EA's Battlefield 3, which saw more than 3.5 million downloads each. On the Wii, Nintendo's Mario Galaxy 2 took the top spot despite launching in 2010, with more 1.28 million downloads. The game was followed by Mario Sports Mix and the highly acclaimed Xenoblade Chronicles, which was presumed exclusive to Europe and Japan until just last month. The Xbox 360's most pirated title was Epic's Gears of War 3, which saw 890,000 downloads -- considerably less than the top games for the Wii or PC. Runners up included Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, with 830,000 and 760,000 downloads, respectively. Pirated games for PlayStation 3 were not included in TorrentFreak's data. TorrentFreak.com's complete lists of illegally torrented games for 2011 is as follows: PC Unauthorized BitTorrent Downloads in 2011 (through December 30, 2011) 1. Crysis 2 (3,920,000) 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (3,650,000) 3. Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) 4. FIFA 12 (3,390,000) 5. Portal 2 (3,240,000) Wii Unauthorized BitTorrent Downloads in 2011 (through December 30, 2011) 1. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (1,280,000) 2. Mario Sports Mix (1,090,000) 3. Xenoblade Chronicles (950,000) 4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (870,000) 5. FIFA 12 (860,000) 360 Unauthorized BitTorrent Downloads in 2011 (through December 30, 2011) 1. Gears of War 3 (890,000) 2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (830,000) 3. Battlefield 3 (760,000) 4. Forza Motorsport 4 (720,000) 5. Kinect Sports: Season Two (690,000)

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About the Author

Tom Curtis

Blogger

Tom Curtis is Associate Content Manager for Gamasutra and the UBM TechWeb Game Network. Prior to joining Gamasutra full-time, he served as the site's editorial intern while earning a degree in Media Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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