Another year has wrapped up, which means another awards season for video games. While the winners for the obvious categories have been chosen, there is one category many often forget -- or try to forget. The prestigious Most Pirated Game award. This one is probably the easiest to win since it generally requires poor security (super cheap these days) and the absence of a back-up plan.
So who was this champion of leaks? Envelope please.
According to TorrentFreak, the clear winner was Crysis 2 on the PC. Back in February, a month before it's official release, the game was leaked on the internet causing Crytek and EA to promptly freak and ask consumers to patiently wait to purchase their full copy.
Unfortunately, the real problem didn't come until a month later when the full version was released, which resulted in a swell of nearly 4 million illegal downloads. This places Crysis 2 as the most pirated game of 2011, beating out big name contenders Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, respectively.
Without DRM or other fail-safe, Crysis 2 was ripe for the plucking from this generation of cyber pirates who, frankly, might have been deterred if Crytek had simply invested in giant, invincible scorpions.
For those wondering who grabbed this prize for the other major systems: Gears of War 3 was the most pirated game for the Xbox 360, appropriate since Marcus Fenix already looks like a pirate, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii -- its second year in a row! Zoinks!
TorrentFreak reports that PC titles are the biggest targets for piracy, averaging around three times more downloads than Xbox 360 or Wii. However, piracy for top titles as a whole has decreased since last year, possibly denoting a decline in piracy or an increase in security measures. They also note that other platforms, including the PS3, don't garner near as many pirated games, and as such are excluded from the list.
How do you feel about piracy, readers? Something inevitable that should be left alone, or something that should be discouraged and addressed?
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Source: TorrentFreak [via CVG]