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'Game of Thrones' season 3 finale was the most pirated show of 2013

'Game of Thrones' season 3 finale was the most pirated show of 2013

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Game of Thrones Season 3 still
Game of Thrones Season 3 still

It's no secret that HBO's Game of Thones is a huge target for pirates, and new info shows that popularity hasn't waned yet. According to TorrentFreak, the Game of Thrones season 3 finale was downloaded a whopping 5.9 million times through BitTorrent, making it the most pirated show of 2013. This is the second year in a row Game of Thrones has achieved this dubious honor — in 2012, TorrentFreak said that each episode of season 2 was downloaded about 3.9 million times on average. Perhaps even more notable was the fact that more people torrented Game of Thrones than watched it on TV, according to TorrentFreak's estimates.

Unsurprisingly, Game of Thrones had stiff competition from Breaking Bad, which was downloaded 4.2 million times. Another AMC show rounded out the top three: The Walking Dead was downloaded 3.6 million times. TorrentFreak doesn't specify which specific episodes placed The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad in the top three, but it's safe to imagine that Breaking Bad's series finale was a big contributor to its popularity amongst torrenters.