Game of Thrones in recent years has been the most pirated show in the world, and the season finale just broke some huge records yet again.
According to Torrent Freak, Game of Thrones's fifth season finale was illegally downloaded 1.5 million times in eight hours.
Never before has a show been pirated this much in such a short period of time. Last year's finale took eight hours to reach that many downloads, as we previously reported. Torrent Freak expects the downloads to reach up to 10 million in the next few days.
That's a pretty crazy amount of downloads, and a lot of money lost for HBO. Earlier this season, we reported that HBO was having Internet service providers send out warnings to people who were illegally downloading their content, mainly in response to the first four episodes of the season leaking online. Based on these numbers, though, it appears that didn't accomplish much.
There are people downloading the episode in various countries all around the world, some of which don't actually have access to HBO. But then there are many people downloading the episode in countries where HBO is legally available, and HBO has even made it more convenient by offering HBO Now, a service that doesn't require a cable subscription. Yet the piracy rates continue to skyrocket.
image of Peter Dinklage courtesy of INFphoto.com