Torrentfreak has listed the top ten pirated games of the year, with figures based off bittorrent downloads rather than that dodgy bloke down the market.
Top of the dubious chart, pop pickers, is Crytek’s Crysis 2 on PC, with nearly four million downloads. It’s closely followed by Modern Warfare 3 with 3.65 million and then Battlefield at three and a half.
FIFA 12 is next, and then Portal 2 teleports into fifth place with 3.24 million. These are all PC downloads, by the way.
The Wii has its own top five: Super Mario Galaxy 2 is at the top with 1.28 million, Mario Sports Mix with 1.1 million and Xenoblade, LEGO Pirates and FIFA 12 finishing up the Nintendo top five.
Gears of War 3 heads up the Xbox 360 ‘chart’ with 900,000 copies downloaded.
We’ll be looking into SOPA (which I personally think could end up being a real mess) very soon, and in particular videogame publisher support for the new act. Stay tuned, as they say.
david
The SOPA will be a disaster I have absolutely no doubt on that. We simply must oppose all forms of censorship for the internet.
Heres a brilliant version of “Hitler reacts” on the SOPA and the guy who made this nails it exactly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvXo4sGB7zM
hazelam
if these sopa supporters want their law passed it should work both ways.
if they make a false copyright claim they should have their sites shut down.
let them do their business by fax and snail mail.
and you want proof that they won’t only use it for stopping piracy?
you’ve heard the megaupload song right?
http://torrentfreak.com/universal-censors-megaupload-song-gets-branded-a-rogue-label-111210/
from the article
Earlier today, Megaupload released a pop video featuring mainstream artists who endorse the cyberlocker service. News of the controversial Mega Song even trended on Twitter, but has now been removed from YouTube on copyright grounds by Universal Music. Kim Dotcom says that Megaupload owns everything in the video, and that the label has engaged in dirty tricks in an attempt to sabotage their successful viral campaign.
This morning we published an article on a new campaign by cyberlocker service Megaupload.
Site founder Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak he had commissioned a song from producer Printz Board featuring huge recording artists including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige. These and others were shouting the praises of Megaupload.
By this afternoon #megaupload was trending on Twitter as news of the song spread. Little surprise interest was so high; Megaupload is described as a rogue site by the RIAA and here are some of their key labels’ artists promoting the service in the most powerful way possible – through a song.
And then, just a little while ago, the music stopped. Visitors to YouTube hoping to listen to the Mega Song were met with the following message.
TorrentFreak immediately contacted Kim to find out what was happening.
“Those UMG criminals. They are sending illegitimate takedown notices for content they don’t own,” he told us. “Dirty tricks in an effort to stop our massively successful viral campaign.”
So did Universal have any right at all to issue YouTube with a takedown notice? Uncleared samples, anything?
“Mega owns everything in this video. And we have signed agreements with every featured artist for this campaign,” Kim told TorrentFreak.
“UMG did something illegal and unfair by reporting Mega’s content to be infringing. They had no right to do that. We reserve our rights to take legal action. But we’d like to give them the opportunity to apologize.”
“UMG is such a rogue label,” Kim added, wholly appreciating the irony.
A few minutes after this exchange Kim contacted us with good news. After filing a YouTube copyright takedown dispute, the video was reinstated. But alas, just seconds later, it was taken down again.
“We filed a dispute, the video came back online and now it’s blocked again by UMG and the automated YouTube system has threatened to block our account for repeat infringement,” Kim explained.
TorrentFreak spoke with Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director at EFF, who says this type of copyright abuse is nothing new.
“This appears to be yet another example of the kind of takedown abuse we’ve seen under existing law — and another reason why Congress should soundly reject the broad new powers contemplated in the Internet Blacklist Bills, aka SOPA/PIPA.
“If IP rightholders can’t be trusted to use the tools already at their disposal — and they can’t — we shouldn’t be giving them new ways to stifle online speech and creativity,” McSherry concludes.
Sherwin Siy, Deputy Legal Director at Public Knowledge, worries that this type of sweeping power would only be augmented with the arrival of the SOPA anti-piracy bill in the US.
“If UMG took down a video it has no rights to, then what we have here is exactly the sort of abuse that careless, overzealous, or malicious copyright holders can create by abusing a takedown law,” he told us.
“What makes this even worse is that UMG, among others, is pushing to expand its power to shut people down by fiat–SOPA lets rightsholders de-fund entire websites with the same sort of non-reviewed demand that removed this video,” he concludes.
Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom informs us that he has now submitted an international counter notification to YouTube, informing them that UMG has no rights to anything in the video and that the label abused the YouTube takedown system to sabotage the company’s business.
“It’s ridiculous how UMG is abusing their intervention powers in YouTube’s system to stop our legitimate campaign. They are willfully sabotaging this viral campaign. They own no rights to this content,” Kim insists.
“What UMG is doing is illegal. And those are the people who are calling Mega rogue? Insanity!”
Streisand Effect, here we come again.
Update: “The fact that this expression could be silenced by a major label — without any apparent infringement — should be seriously troubling to anyone who cares about artists’ speech rights,” says Casey Rae-Hunter, Deputy Director, Future of Music Coalition. “If this can happen to Snoop Dogg and others, it can happen to anyone.”
and this one is an interesting read.
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-video-reinstated-universal-says-you-cant-touch-us-111216/
and that’s just the publishers, what about when some company doing something illegal tries to get a site reporting their actions, or even saying something that paints them in a bad light, shut down by using a copyright claim, it’s already been tried so you can’t believe it won’t happen again.
if this sopa bill passes, it’ll prove the us government is firmly in the pockets of big business.
and it won’t just affect the us either, the us government has a long reach, especially when it involves profit.
colmshan1990
I’d have thought UMG would sign deals with artists preventing them from doing songs for other labels (In this case, Megaupload)?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought a deal with major label meant only releasing songs under that label for the duration of the contract?
I am leery of the SOPA bill though, but if they added more independent checks to prevent abuse of the system I’d be happy with the compromise. We all know something has to be done to stop piracy, it’s just tricky finding the right middle ground between consumer’s freedom, and ultimately, consumer’s jobs. After all, if a big company fails, it’s the smallest guys who pay, right?
hazelam
if there’s a breach of contract that’s between the artist and the label, they can’t go ordering takedowns of content they have no rights over.
and i’ve seen plenty of artist collaborate with other artists not on their label, eminem and dido, for example, eminem is with universal and dido’s with sony, so i doubt that’s the issue.
and if it was why wouldn’t universal make that the basis of their claim.
seriously though.
what would these publishers have to actually do for you to not automatically take their side?
what would it take for you to not start thinking up excuses for them?
would it take them eating babies or something?
because everything else they do seems to be fine with you.
the only compromise that has any merit regarding sopa is its death.
i don’t believe this faux concern you have for “the smallest guys”
if you truly cared anything about the little guy you would oppose sopa 100%.
it’s the billionaire managers and owners of these companies that stand to benefit,
i should have known you’d be supportive of sopa though.
what happens to the little guy when a billion dollar publisher can shut him down without proof?
before you say anything, there are many small businesses that operate solely on the net so shutting down their sites would kill those businesses.
and you’re advocating these big companies being able to shut them down with a copyright claim without any checks first and without needing any evidence?
and independent checks to stop abuse? that’s a joke right?
wall street was a work of fiction, gordon gecko isn’t real, greed is not good.
colmshan1990
First of all, I like playing Devil’s Advocate. I’ve often stumbled across some good (and some bad) points to any discussion ny looking at it from both sides. So I’ll always be thinking up excuses and justifications for anything controversial, or drawbacks for something that seems good. One of my nicknames in school was ‘Mr. Cynical.’
No, I’m not supportive of SOPA- just that SOMETHING needs to be done to address the very real issue of online piracy. Is SOPA that silver bullet? Maybe. It has the potential, if every country adopted it. The drawbacks? Totalitarian control of ANYTHING should not be allowed. Weighing it up, if I was given the power to decide if SOPA was to be enacted in Irish law tomorrow, I’d vote No. I’d also write a letter to my TD (MP) and tell them to come back with a less one-sided bill. That the company receiving the notice should have an equal say against the suspension of content from their site (not shutdown of site, which is ridiculous, when surely an individual piece of copyright infringement could be targeted- it couldn’t possibly encompass every facet of the site, could it?) and that EVIDENCE MUST BE PRESENT. Evidence that the other company knew they were infringing copyright, evidence that a request was sent asking for it to be taken down, evidence that an agreement between the two companies for the use of the copyrighted item was sought and could not be reached fairly, and evidence that it is harming the petitioning company. And that this is brought to an independent authority.
SOPA goes too far.
I did mention I want independent checks- that would require evidence before they push the big red button to stop the site. With a punishment going the other way if the claim is false.
As for the rest of your statement, that’s capitalism versus socialism. Whilst I can see certain short term benefits to socialism, I wholeheartadly support capitalism. If the major governments of the world weren’t so moronic, and I’m pinning this one on tabloid culture, the world wouldn’t be in this recession, and capitalism would continue to work perfectly well.
Simply put, I support the idea that if you make a deal and agree to sell a product, that it is honoured in good faith, by both sides.
If you are stupid enough to enter a deal where you don’t receive any benefit, then I support that the deal you agreed to continues to punish. It is a generally fair system, with exceptions at the very top and very bottom, but the best thing about capitalism is that with hard work and innovation, it is the easiest system in which a person can climb from the bottom to the top rung of the ladder.
Simply put, I do believe that greed is good. Greed has fuelled the advancements of the human race for millennia. But greed and avarice can are also dangerous. A balance must always be sought, or like fire, we get burned. But fire has it’s uses too, does it not?
hazelam
maybe in an ideal world capitalism would work, but sadly that’s not this world.
maybe if you’re in the top few percent of the population that owns the majority of the wealth capitalism works great.
but for the other 90 odd percent, not so much.
capitalism in principal is a decent system, but just like almost every other system like it, it gets corrupted by people and their greed.
people getting fair rewards for the work they do is fine, in theory, because that’s all it is.
the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, that’s the way capitalism works these days.
because you have big businesses that have gotten too good at playing the system so they twist laws and manipulate governments to let them get away with whatever they want so their top management can get multi million bonuses.
and the system as it is, is set so it stays that way, if you’re born poor, you’ll most likely die poor, unless you’re one of very few extraordinary people, or you’re gifted at hoofing a bag of wind around, you’re never going to work yourself into any great wealth.
greed is not good, greeed is a sickness, greed is the one of the worst parts of humanity, greed is thinking you’re more deserving of something then everybody else.
i’d trust fire a damn site more than somebody who’s greedy.
a fire has no motives, a fire doesn’t burn because it wants what you have.
i’d blame the bankers that screwed up so badly they needed billions in bail outs meaning now there have to be cutbacks on public services like the fire service.
who then in the height of arrogance gave themselves multi million pound bonuses.
and this is coming from somebody who has in fact been burned out of house and home.
and if a law like sopa passes, the chance of any checks and balances stopping abuse are about as slim as that of sopa actually stopping piracy.
like i said before, these companies have gotten too good at playing the system.
this is just another attempt to put themselves above the law.
to get something like sopa to a state where it even begins to be fair would require changing almost every aspect.
and as sopa stands now, there are none of those checks, which is why it needs to die.
ok, last thing.
i went a bit too far with some of the things i said, and i apologise for that.
i stand by my views, but i made this too personal.
colmshan1990
No problem.
I honestly don’t feel right with accepting an apology because I don’t feel one is due here- a debate is just a debate,
there’s nothing hurtful or malicious meant by either of us.
And yes, bankers did cause it- but lack of regulation from the people who’s sole purpose is to regulate (the government) is the single biggest problem.
We all know mistakes can be made, that’s why we have a system of failsafes. It just can’t work if the people in charge of the system don’t pay any attentionm though.
I think SOPA needs another step added- everything must pass through a government office, or a court if needs be, and both sides given fair representation, before any punitive action is taken. The right to a fair trial and all that.
And that would turn SOPA into a far less radical, draconian bill (In my opinion).
And to be honest, the drawbacks of capitalism ideals versus reality are the same in every system- we, the human race, are incapable of building an utopia, that perfect system.
david
“if this sopa bill passes, it’ll prove the us government is firmly in the pockets of big business.” – said Captain Obvious.
MayContainEvil
Why isn’t there a Sony chart? Is the PS3 completely unpiratable (that may not be a word but you know what I mean) or something?
Sympozium
Its known to be I guess but isn’t as popular?
hazelam
i guess nobody figured out a way to do it quickly and easily.
the ways people have found to do it quickly get patched by sony.
not like the dreamcast, by the end of that machine they could put everything to bypass security on the game disc so all it needed to run a copy was the copy itself.
no console modification or anything.
i wonder if windows ce was the vulnerability there, and ms did have the xbox waiting in the wings towards the end of it’s life.
hmmm, seems kinda suspicious when i put it like that. o_O
BanjoBoy
very little piracy.
” The platforms that are not mentioned, such as the PS3, get considerably less downloads and are excluded for that reason.”
Awayze
Most games are hard to make them available on the Internet and even if they do, even most of the jailbroken PS3′ s won’t play the game and then there’s a game requiring the latest firmware which may have not been jailbroken. Then you need a backup app that will actually allow the games to run etc it’s complicated on PS3.
Not to mention having a expensive Blu ray drive, then someone having to upload 10-50GB games then for the leecher having to wait forever to get the game. Not worth it in the end lol.
TSBonyman
SOPA – Screw Online Privacy, Arr! .. :/
Pete_UK
Silly Onerous Prattle Again.
TSBonyman
Succinct Observational Precision, Actually.
3shirts
So, correct me if i’m wrong but if you were badmouthing a record label, TV show (or any media really) in your popular blog they could come along, post a link to their content anonymously in the comments and then get you shut down.
Seems fair