In a day and age where everybody expects everything to be free, perhaps it’s a status symbol when people are stealing your stuff like crazy. It certainly bodes well for Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, who once again are topping the charts for the most pirated shows on TV.
The Hollywood Reporter tells us that for two years in a row now, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show on TV, with fans making 5.9 million illegal downloads of the medieval hit through the site BitTorrent. And it only seems to be growing, because the show had 4.28 downloads the previous year.
#2 on the list is Breaking Bad, then Walking Dead, which fans illegally downloaded 4.2 million and 3.6 million times respectively. The Reporter also points out there’s more people illegally downloading the show than legitimately watching it in the States.
Other shows on the list this year include Dexter with 3.1 million downloads, Homeland with 2.4 million, Vikings with 2.3 million, and Arrow, with 2.2 million. Most of the top ten are genre shows, which we don’t find too surprising, and we’re guessing that unlike what Napster did to the music business, illegal downloading is probably a bragging right for genre shows. It’s certainly not putting these shows in jeopardy of being cancelled, and the most important thing of all is people are watching in droves.
