4.27 million illegal copies of Black Ops downloaded

It will come as no surprise to many to read that ‘Black Ops', the latest title in the Call Of Duty franchise is reportedly the most pirated game of 2010.

Torrentfreak, the popular bittorrent site have awarded COD: Black Ops the highest amount of illegal downloads in 2010. It shows that 4.27 million users downloaded an illegal copy of the game, dated to December 26th. Scarily enough, the game has only been out for a short while and that number will increase significantly over the next couple of months.

While this is a serious amount of cash for the developer not to be getting in the form of sales, the title did sell 5.6 million copies on the first day of sales and generated revenues over $1 billion within a few weeks of the launch, making it the most successful game launch in history.

Other leading titles didn't escape the warez scene, with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 having almost 4 million illegal downloads. Mafia 2 received 3.55 million downloads and Mass Effect 2 with 3.2 million.

This is billions of dollars of lost revenue for the companies involved, but there really is no way to stop this from happening. DRM and other methods rarely work as the cracking teams can break them. The Ubisoft system seems the hardest to break, it has been used in titles such as Assassins Creed 2, however it requires gamers to be online all the time. If your internet connection has a problem then the game you just bought won't work.

KitGuru says: Do you download games or are you one of those people who believe in paying for everything you get, including software?

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