Skip to content

Game of Thrones S7 illegally downloaded billion times, says piracy tracking firm

HBO Richard Dormer as Beric DondarrionHBO

The seventh season of Game of Thrones was illegally downloaded "more than a billion times".

Piracy tracking firm Muso says that its data suggests each episode was pirated around 140 million times, with the first episode the most popular so far.

That compares to 32 million legally viewed streams of each instalment.

The seventh season of the show was hit by a series of leaks and four people were arrested in India last month in connection with one hack.

HBO's internal servers were compromised, with scripts and the personal details of Game Of Thrones actors shared online.

HBO Kit Harington as Jon Snow and Emilia Clarke as Daenerys TargaryenHBO

Unbroadcast episodes of some of HBO's other shows, including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Insecure, were also leaked.

Hackers claimed to have stolen 1.5TB of data.

HBO Lena Headey as CerseiHBO

The majority of the pirate views from the seventh series of Game of Thrones came from streaming services (85%).

Torrents made up a relatively small percentage of the total (9%) followed by direct downloads (6%).

HBO Rory McCann as Sandor "The Hound" Clegane and Hafþór Julius Bjornsson as The MountainHBO
The Hound and The Mountain meet again in the final episode of series seven of Game of Thrones

Talking to TorrentFreak, Muso's co-founder Andy Chatterley said the various leaks while the show was being broadcast on TV led to the high numbers.

"It's no secret that HBO has been plagued by security breaches throughout the latest season, which has seen some episodes leak before broadcast and added to unlicensed activity," he says.

HBO The Ice King destroying the wall on a dragonHBO

"In addition to the scale of piracy when it comes to popular shows, these numbers demonstrate that unlicensed streaming can be a far more significant type of piracy than torrent downloads."

Muso says the data is based on estimates and doesn't include the Chinese market.

Total global downloads and streams by episode...

Episode one (Dragonstone): 187,427,575

Episode two (Stormborn): 123,901,209

Episode three (The Queen's Justice): 116,027,851

Episode four (The Spoils of War): 121,719,868

Episode five (Eastwatch): 151,569,560

Episode six (Beyond the Wall): 184,913,279

Episode seven (The Dragon and the Wolf) as of 3 September: 143,393,804

All episode bundles - Season 7: 834,522

Total (as of 3 September) = 1,029,787,668

Find us on Instagram at BBCNewsbeat and follow us on Snapchat, search for bbc_newsbeat