After Call of Duty: Black Ops, last year, the shooter Crysis 2 , published by Electronic Arts, became the most pirated game of 2011, according to TorrentFreak. Each year, the specialized site publishes a list of most downloaded tracks from the platform BitTorrent. TorrentFreak does not go into details of his methodology, but says he cuts a variety of sources, starting with the public BitTorrent trackers.
It is rather surprising to see the game from Crytek at the top of the rankings. Certainly, a pirated version was leaked over a month before the official launch of the game in February, says TorrentFreak, but "if tens of thousands of people have downloaded this copy, the real boom came in March," ironically the site. With 3.9 million copies downloaded, but the numbers are lower than last year, with Black Ops, which was downloaded Torrent files by more than 4.2 million people.
The rest of the ranking on PC, however, largely corresponds to the biggest video game blockbusters. Modern Warfare 3 is indeed the second, with 3.65 million downloads, while the game was released in November. The title broke sales records, earning a billion dollars in just 16 days. Title published by Activision-Blizzard is followed closely in the ranking of the most pirated games Battlefied 3 (3.5 million), its rival Electronic Arts.
On consoles, where piracy is more difficult to implement, it is also the largest licenses that are the most downloaded. XBox 360 is the tactical shooter Gears of War 3 happens first (890,000). According to VG Chartz the specialized site, the game is exclusive to the console from Microsoft, has passed - legally - to over 5 million copies.
TorrentFreak notes that for the second consecutive year, the game platforms Super Mario Galaxy 2 is ahead of most pirated games on the Wii with 1.28 million illegal copies. The handheld and the Sony Playstation 3 do not appear in this ranking. Long deemed "inviolable", the protection of the Sony console has been hacked for the first time in January 2010.
The problem of piracy varies greatly depending on platform games. And if the PC seems to be most exposed, publishers multiply the techniques in an attempt to curb piracy. Activation codes, or the creation of accounts to use the games are becoming more common. So much so that the UFC-Que Choisir filed a complaint in November against four game publishers and distributors for "deceptive marketing practices."
PC, business models are also changing. Imported from Asia, the model "free-to-play" where the player must pay if it wishes to obtain new functionality. This system works particularly on the games 'social', including proposed on Facebook or Google +. Dematerialized sales, dominated by Steam, are also becoming more competitive, and the "cloud gaming" variation of "cloud computing" is also beginning to penetrate.
Others seek finally to invent new models. The "Humble Indie Bundle" where the player can pay the amount he wants for independent game, have increased at year end.
