Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

[CptainCrunch]

Found this article on g4tv.com. I would also like to remind anyone who does not know, we do not discuss stealing the game personally nor how to. Please feel free to discuss the article, but keep this in mind.

<a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/Sexy-Pirate.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_Sexy-Pirate.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>

According to website TorrentFreak, the most pirated game of 2009 was Modern Warfare 2, crushing all the competition. The game was reportedly downloaded 4,100,000 times for the PC and 907,000 times for the 360. As for the Wii, the most downloaded title of 2009, by far, was Super Mario Bros. Wii which was downloaded 1,150,000 times.

As far as illicit downloading itself: It's going strong, sadly. This year, the most downloaded titles more than doubled last year's numbers, equaling the growth in uTorrent users.

Please understand, pirates, if you continue stealing content in this way, eventually, the budgets of games will have to be cut, honest consumers will be forced to put up with more Draconian anti-piracy measures, and game companies will lose money. No one wants that, do they?

When you've finished contemplating the moral implications of your hobbies, click the "Source" link for the full list of most torrented games of the year.

Is anyone really surprised by this? PC changes aside, I don't think that would have made much of a difference. Largest game released and it have a high level of pirating.

Source

[Dr Random]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

I think a lot of the pirating for PC was in protest and not of actual piracy for the sake of it.
Also due to those guys who cracked the dev console and did it without steam opened the flood gates for many who didn't want to buy it but still play it.
Steam worked in that regard but it goes to show, that if my maths is correct they lost 143 million pounds or $227,940,063.92 in potential sales.
(based that on steam price at £34.99 x 400,100,000 = 143,590,000.00 GBP

=

United Kingdom Pounds | United States Dollars
1 GBP = 1.58744 USD | 1 USD = 0.629946 GBP

http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi?Amount=143590000&From=GBP&To=USD

[=)BiT(= Evant3k]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

It's funny because they took out the only reason to buy the game when they decided not to use dedicated servers, as P2P can be done with a VPN without the need of IW.net.

[Mavrik347]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

IW isn't balanced for the internet.

[Vreki]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

I think a lot of the pirating for PC was in protest and not of actual piracy for the sake of it.
Also due to those guys who cracked the dev console and did it without steam opened the flood gates for many who didn't want to buy it but still play it.
Steam worked in that regard but it goes to show, that if my maths is correct they lost 143 million pounds or $227,940,063.92 in potential sales.
(based that on steam price at £34.99 x 400,100,000 = 143,590,000.00 GBP

That only works if those 4 million pirates would have bought the game if they couldnt pirate it. Its like when the record industry estmates lost sales based on those who have 100000 downloaded songs.
Its interesting to see that piracy is also rampant on the consoles, even though that usually requires hardware modifications.

[-Shifty-]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

Although what you said in the thread subject was true, I doubt those shaming words will ever make a pirating gamer think twice. Why would a kid buy a game when he doesn't posses the money, when he knows he can have it free online.

The only way to stop this is to get the source, not the clients.

[Vreki]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

The only way to stop this is to get the source, not the clients.

I disagree, its impossible to stop distribution over the internet. They need to secure and authenticate the clients, maybe using some kind of RSA token?
Blizzard is offering something like that for WOW. http://www.wow.com/2008/06/26/blizza...dwide-invitat/

[RYKUU]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

I got this email from cod4 forums:

It's safe to say that MW2 made a heap of money. Do you know exactly how much it made in just a weeks time? $550 million, shattering media sales records across the board. What's crazy is if the total sales from piracy were able to be taken into account, I estimate another $263 million could have been made.

I was able to establish there numbers because Torrentfreak.com announced that MW2 was the most pirated game of 2009. Around 4.1 million downloads were made for the PC, and 970,000 for the Xbox 360.

Here's an interesting excerpt from the article, "With 4.1 million unauthorized downloads of the PC version alone, the game more than doubles the achievement of last year’s ‘winner‘ Spore. Modern Warfare 2 leads both the PC and Xbox 360 lists, by a landslide.

The overall trend across all platforms is that, unlike last year, all of the games are 2009 releases. What makes Modern Warfare 2’s chart-topping even more impressive is that this has been achieved after just two months of availability. We further see that the figures for the most downloaded titles have more than doubled compared to last year, equaling the growth in uTorrent users. "

very similar to yours.

[Dr Random]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

That only works if those 4 million pirates would have bought the game if they couldnt pirate it. Its like when the record industry estmates lost sales based on those who have 100000 downloaded songs.
Its interesting to see that piracy is also rampant on the consoles, even though that usually requires hardware modifications.

Thats my point, They only pirated in protest due to lack of dedicated servers, mods etc etc and so forth.

[Dr Random]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

I disagree, its impossible to stop distribution over the internet. They need to secure and authenticate the clients, maybe using some kind of RSA token?
Blizzard is offering something like that for WOW. http://www.wow.com/2008/06/26/blizza...dwide-invitat/

I have one of those, they are outright awsome.

[[UN]TA|Pierre]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

Piracy is good publicity. MW2 made more money then any game ever released, it also got downloaded more then any game ever released. I laughed when I read that "Please understand, pirates, if you continue stealing content in this way, eventually, the budgets of games will have to be cut". I love how they kept the part about MW2 being a huge success out of the article. Piracy forces quality since alot of people test before buy now, which makes bad games fail.

[Unregistered]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

That figure doesn't take into account the many, many people (myself included) who like to try before they buy, or are too impatient to wait for the release date!
I'm not saying it is right, nor am I defening pirating - just that a large proportion of those that downloaded a pirate copy may well have gone and bought the game. That's what I did - for me games are often just too expensive to take a risk on before you know if it's any good or not.

[Vreki]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

Thats my point, They only pirated in protest due to lack of dedicated servers, mods etc etc and so forth.

They pirated because they wanted to play the game witout paying. If they wanted to make an honest protest then they should just avoid the game completely.

Piracy forces quality since alot of people test before buy now, which makes bad games fail.

I would like to know how many of those 4 million "testers" than endup playing 10+ hours of the game witout ever buying it. I dont think that argument holds water.

[Vreki]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

Thats my point, They only pirated in protest due to lack of dedicated servers, mods etc etc and so forth.

They pirated because they wanted to play the game witout paying. If they wanted to make an honest protest then they should just avoid the game completely.

[[DBD]crowfoot]

Re: Modern Warfare 2 Most Pirated of 2009

MW2 is helping kill off pc gaming for good!