2010- Most Pirated Games

We all know it happens and some of us are even guilty of it, but have you ever wondered just how many times a game is illegally downloaded? 2010 wraps up with Black Ops (PC) leading the way followed by Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) and Dante’s Inferno (XBox 360) as the front runners for each platform, according to information gathered from various sources such as public BitTorrent trackers.

With CoD: Black Ops selling over 5 million copies within 24 hours of release (over 8.2 million in one month!), one would assume the piracy rate would be pretty high as well, but just how high? On the Torrent side, try over 4.2 million downloads in 2 months, that’s an average of 70,000 a day, compared with second place winner (loser?), Bad Company 2 at 3.9 million total, but over 10 months at 13,000 a day. What is interesting to note is the $1 billion sales mark for Black Ops in just over a month… all this piracy must be bleeding Activision dry… at least the good news is a lot of virtual zombies have been slain.

All of the sources used in the final download tallies are not mentioned, but you can bet that the total number of illegal downloads will never truly be known since other download methods exist, such as direct downloads like Rapidshare, MegaUpload, Usenet and all the bootleg copies.

So, is every pirated copy a lost sale, or is it a sign of popularity? Well, we’ll probably never find out.

As 2010 comes to an end, we follow up our most pirated movies chart by taking a look at the most pirated games of the year. Call of Duty: Black Ops is the absolute winner in the PC games category this year. On Xbox 360 Dante’s Inferno receives the same honor, while Super Mario Galaxy 2 scoops the title of most pirated Wii game of 2010.