Most pirated games of 2011

[Winnow]

http://kotaku.com/5872253/the-most-pira ... es-of-2011

Top 5 Pirated PC Games

1. Crysis 2 (3,920,000) (March 2011)
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (3,650,000) (Nov. 2011)
3. Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) (Oct. 2011)
4. FIFA 12 (3,390,000) (Sept. 2011)
5. Portal 2 (3,240,000) (April 2011)

Top 5 Pirated Wii Games

1. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (1,280,000) (May 2010)
2. Mario Sports Mix (1,090,000) (Feb. 2011)
3. Xenoblade Chronicles (950,000) (Aug. 2011 EU)
4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (870,000) (May 2011)
5. FIFA 12 (860,000) (Sept. 2011)

Top 5 Pirated Xbox 360 Games

1. Gears of War 3 (890,000) (Sept. 2011)
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (830,000) (Nov. 2011)
3. Battlefield 3 (760,000) (Oct. 2011)
4. Forza Motorsport 4 (720,000) (Oct. 2011)
5. Kinect Sports: Season Two (690,000) (Oct. 2011)

Wasn't me! I didn't pirate or play a single game on that list! Crysis 2 at the top of the PC list is kind of surprising. I guess its numbers aren't thinned out by 360 and PS3 versions.

I question the list as well due to this blurb:

Speaking to PC Gamer, CD Projekt CEO and cofounder Marcin Iwinski broke down the anecdotal numbers based on concurrent torrent downloads and came to the estimation that The Witcher 2 has been pirated more than 4.5 million times. Iwinski said the real numbers are likely much worse.

That would place Witcher 2 at the top of the list. If he's only looking at torrent numbers than he's right in the numbers likely being worse. Add newsgroups and there are people that use direct downloads (rapidshare, filesonic, hotfile, etc etc etc) to grab large games these days.

[kyoukan]

thanks for reminding us all what a fucking lowlife you are

[Winnow]

Keep fucking that chicken!

[Fairweather Pure]

The last game I pirated C&C Red Alert 3 in 2008. I DLed it and had to change some config files around to get it running but it was pretty painless. Before that? I don't even remember. I played the first mission of RA3 and that was it. I did a HD format and reinstall a couple of weeks later and forgot to back up the game and lost it. I later got it for 360 for dirt cheap and now own it as part of Steam's C&C collection sale when I bought the entire series last year for 10 bucks.

I wouldn't even bother pirating games today. Porno and music on the other hand...

[Chidoro]

haven't pirated any games since C64 days when the floppies would hold 8 or 9 dogshit games per.
never understood not trying content legal ways in this day and age.
and I'm completely lost on those who are trying to own something they're not interested in buying.

[miir]

Some people are so fucking cheap that they jailbreak their iphones to get out of paying 99 cents for games.

[kyoukan]

It really is sad. We should be banning people from posting in the games forum if they admit they don't pay for their games.

[Jice Virago]

Especially trust fund babies.....

I think the last game I actually pirated was Mac game my freshman year of college...? Black Tower or something like that?

[Winnow]

You people don't pirate music or movies, etc either or do you just pick and choose your righteousness, oh ye with the usenet account...what's that for? Searching for demos on there? lol. OMG, there's a book forum here that has links to ebooks! Go lynch Py!

hypocrites!

Besides the obvious where I stated I hadn't pirated any of the games on the list, it's fun to watch kyoukan melt down with her fantasy interpretations. These threads crack me up.

Just because it's fun to watch that thing blow a gasket:

http://www.itworld.com/security/237537/ ... e-internet

Hackers to launch pirate satellite to help build pirate Internet

Hacker-sponsored satellite project aims to prove free speech is as valuable as cell spectrum
By Kevin Fogarty

January 03, 2012, 4:31 PM — Driven reportedly more by the effort of entertainment companies to police their content and punish those who infringe copyrights than by the increasing number of countries adding further restrictions on what their people can or can't do online, a group of German hackers is trying to start a movement to build a communications satellite that could support unrestricted channels on the Internet.

The project, called the Hackerspace Global Grid, would consist of at least one satellite in low-Earth orbit providing connections among independent ground stations – creating a network of nodes completely independent of the Internet itself.

"The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space," said hacktivist Nick Farr, who began the call for a satellite project in August in response to new Internet restrictions in China, Libya, Syria and other authoritarian countries as well as pressure to suppress commercial content in Western countries with laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa). "Let's take the Internet out of the control of terrestrial entities."

Farr was among the activists pitching the project at the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin in August at which the group presented the project in detail. The Congress is an annual hacker conference sponsored by the German Chaos Computer Club – an anomaly among hacker groups in that it has been in operation so long it has become respectable as much as a political movement opposing restrictive rules on digital life as for the hacking activity of some members.

The Hackerspace Global Grid (working project site here)is daunting for its ambition to put a satellite into space, primarily due to the difficulty and expense of launching it on someone else's rocket. Building the satellite would be much simpler, and the ground stations would be easier still, according to project sources quoted in a Techspot story about its launch.

Ground stations would cost between $100 and $150 for receivers that would use GPS to determine where the satellite should be and zero in on its signal, they said.

The satellite is likely to be based on work done to develop low-cost satellites by the Amateur Radio Satellite (AMSAT) association in England and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., a specialist in small satellites that was spun out of the University of Surrey and with Constellation, a German aerospace research collective.

Building the satellite and launching it are still problems being solved, but prototypes for different types of ground stations could be ready by the middle of this year, Farr told the BBC.

Aside from the complexity of building the sat, expense and red tape of getting it loaded on an appropriate rocket and placed in the right orbit is the possibility that one or more governments in countries the project is based will delay or stop it all together.

Most have a hard enough time tolerating pirate Internet sites, let alone super-terrestrial independent pirate Internets.

Once all the other pieces are in place, it wouldn't surprise me to see the actual launch delayed by years while its originators fight to get a court to rule that an Internet unrestricted by national or commercial censorship is as good a justification to put another piece of junk in orbit as defense, espionage or, in the case of telecommunications companies, the desire to use publicly owned skies and space to make money for a very few

[Jice Virago]

The only thing I have pirated in the last 20 years has been emulator roms of arcade and pinball machines, which the parent companies cannot really make money off of anyhow and would not fit in my livingroom otherwise. I actually own the original media for all of the emulator roms I have that are available for purchase in the US, which means every game except Sensu Dieken 3 (sp?) which had an english translation hacked rom. I even bought FF5 when it came out in the US even though I had already beaten it on an emulator before that point. I guess I want game companies to make something other than watered down sequals with tons of DRM more than I want to be a cheapskate douche?

And yeah, I own a copy of every movie and song that I have in digital form on its original media. Your inability to comprehend ethics does not suprise me.

[Winnow]

Anyone else? Jice has read the Bible three times so he's a bit odd to begin with!

[Jice Virago]

No argument there, considering most people who believe the damn thing have not read it as many times.....

[Canelek]

Meh. Doesn't bother me really. Personally, I just get too bored with most games to bother...figure if I really want it, I'll just buy the damn thing.

TV Shows, however...well, guilty.

[Chidoro]

You people don't pirate music or movies, etc either or do you just pick and choose your righteousness, oh ye with the usenet account...what's that for? Searching for demos on there? lol. OMG, there's a book forum here that has links to ebooks! Go lynch Py!
hypocrites!

I don't pirate music or movies either. Again, I don't need to own everything since I dislike most things and if there is something I want to try, there are plenty of legal outlets to do so in this day and age.

For something a comedian has done very recently and has seen great success is make his download which can then be copied to dvd, easily available for $5. You are then given the link to download it freely. Basically cutting out as many middle men as possible, for $5 you can watch Louis CK's newest special. If people were really cheap fucks and it failed, he wouldn't do it again. Fortunately, it's been a great success.

https://buy.louisck.net/

[Aabidano]

I don't pirate music or movies either. Again, I don't need to own everything since I dislike most things and if there is something I want to try, there are plenty of legal outlets to do so in this day and age.

Pretty much.

Though in Winnows' defense of the 70k movies in his Hello Kitty - Cannes edition set 99% will presumably never actually be looked at.

[Winnow]

Haters will hate. Potatoes will Potate.

I wonder if you Canadians support SOPA as well:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and what it means for Canadians

...

What does this mean for Canadians?

SOPA is a potential online disaster thinly veiled as an American issue, but the ramifications of such censorship will certainly stretch north of the border. Michael Geist of the Toronto Star reveals how the U.S. could claim Canadian domain names in the millions.

"First, it defines a 'domestic domain name' as a domain name 'that is registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority, that is located within a judicial district of the United States,' explains Geist. "Since every dot-com, dot-net and dot-org domain is managed by a domain name registry in the U.S., the law effectively asserts jurisdiction over tens of millions of domain names regardless of where the registrant actually resides."

To put this in context, Canadian Internet providers rely on the Americas Registry for Internet Numbers, an U.S. allocation entity known as ARIN. Its territorial reach includes Canada, the U.S. and 20 Caribbean nations. Amending this bill will effectively treat all IP addresses within this reach as "domestic for U.S. law purposes."

Strong arguments against SOPA

Many who stand opposed to SOPA believe the language of the bill "demonstrates a lack of understanding of the way the internet functions and disregards fundamental technological principles of the internet," Reddit explains. SOPA has been dubbed the "Internet blacklist bill," potentially empowering the U.S. government with the ability to shut down any global website even if a single U.S. citizen were to visit that site.

One of the strongest arguments against SOPA takes aim at how the bill could affect the global economy. A study found that more than 80 per cent of 200 venture capitalists would be more likely to invest in today's internet regulations with a risky economy, than they would be in SOPA's regulated internet with an improved economy.

[Aabidano]

Bought the last two movies that interest me just before the holidays, JabberWocky and Yellowbeard. Neither was available on DVD for a long time, I wouldn't have had a lot of remorse snagging a pirated copy of either but not enough interest to go to the effort to do so. My total movie collection stands around 50(?), haven't counted them.

Someone who has an active interest in watching or listening to the media they were downloading would seem to be a much more egregious offender than Winnow, who seems more into hoarding things for reasons unknown.

[Funkmasterr]

He's like a lonely old cat lady, except he collects media instead of cats.

[Aslanna]

SOPA day of protest on Wednesday. Get your Wikipedia searches in before then!

[Fairweather Pure]

SOPA day of protest on Wednesday. Get your Wikipedia searches in before then!

You could still search Wikipedia on your wireless devices like iPhone and iPad!

[Aslanna]

Could with your PC too. Which I thought was a bit lame. Just had to hit stop when you got to your article as it would load the redirect page a second later if you didn't.

[Funkmasterr]

Demonoid was down too.

[Zaelath]

TV shows here.. though if I could pay $8 a month for Netflix here and wait for the season to go up there, I would.

The legal options for media in the US are incredibly cheap compared to "the rest of the world". Like $36/year for Pandora versus $12+/month for anything similar here. The shitty equivalent of Netflix streaming is $15/month. For some reason I can watch lots of old TV on the computer, but on the PS3 it's only movies..

[masteen]

I pirated the original Star Wars trilogy laser-disc rip.

But only because that bag of pig vomit won't sell me an unaltered version. Like gaben says, it's a service issue, not a price issue.