Don't be a afraid, there aren't any spoilers in this article, other than just one: the season finale of Game of Thrones has just set a new piracy record!
It took only eight hours for 1.5 million downloads to be recorded for the last episode of season 5 of Game of Thrones. And at its peak, more than 250,000 users were downloading or upload the same torrent, another record.
The finale could be downloaded more than 10 million times in the coming days.
The previous record was also set by Game of Thrones, for the season 4 finale, and the next time the download record will be broken will most likely be broken by the same show again (when the new season airs in April 2016).
With several loose ends left to be tied up in the season 5 finale, it is expected that the season 6 premier might be the most popular episode of Game of Thrones ever, both on legal channels, and via pirated sources.
The high piracy rate comes despite HBO's best efforts to reduce the piracy rate, including introducing a simultaneous broadcast schedule worldwide, as well as sending warnings to individual downloaders. These measures appears to have had little effect, but the increasing number of pirated downloads may simply be linked to the ever increasing popularity of the show, rather than an indication of change in attitude towards people's willingness to pay for HBO content.
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