The practice of illegally copying and distributing digital games is
at the heart of one of the most heated and divisive debates in the
international games environment, with stakeholders typically
viewing it as a very positive (pirates) or very negative (the industry,
policy makers). Despite the substantial interest in game piracy,
there is very little objective information available about its
magnitude or its distribution across game titles and game genres.
This paper presents a large-scale analysis of the illegal distribution
of digital game titles, which was conducted by monitoring the
BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing protocol. The sample
includes 173 games and a collection period of three months from
late 2010 to early 2011. A total of 12.6 million unique peers were
identified, making this the largest examination of game piracy via
P2P networks to date. The ten most pirated titles encompass 5.27
million aggregated unique peers alone. In addition to genre, review
scores were found to be positively correlated with the logarithm
of the number of unique peers per game (p<0.05)

Bauer, Kevin

Drachen, Anders

Veitch, Robert W. D.

OpenArchive@CBS

Only the Good… Get Pirated: 
Game Piracy Activity vs. MetaCritic Score 
 
Anders Drachen 
Department of Informatics 
Copenhagen Business School 
ad.inf@cbs.dk 
Kevin Bauer 
Cheriton School of Computer Science 
University of Waterloo 
k4bauer@cs.uwaterloo.ca 
Robert W. D. Veitch 
Department of Informatics 
Copenhagen Business School 
rv.inf@cbs.dk 
 
ABSTRACT 
The practice of illegally copying and distributing digital games is 
at the heart of one of the most heated and divisive debates in the 
international games environment, with stakeholders typically 
viewing it as a very positive (pirates) or very negative (the indus-
try, policy makers). Despite the substantial interest in game pira-
cy, there is very little objective information available about its 
magnitude or its distribution across game titles and game genres. 
This paper presents a large-scale analysis of the illegal distribu-
tion of digital game titles, which was conducted by monitoring the 
BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing protocol. The sample 
includes 173 games and a collection period of three months from 
late 2010 to early 2011. A total of 12.6 million unique peers were 
identified, making this the largest examination of game piracy via 
P2P networks to date. The ten most pirated titles encompass 5.27 
million aggregated unique peers alone. In addition to genre, re-
view scores were found to be positively correlated with the loga-
rithm of the number of unique peers per game (p<0.05). 
Categories and Subject Descriptors 
K.8.0 [Games]; K.7.m [The Computing Profession]: Miscellane-
ous – Ethics. 
General Terms 
Economics, Security, Human Factors, Legal Aspects. 
Keywords 
Digital games, game piracy, BitTorrent, economics. 
 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Game piracy, which involves the illegal copying and distribution 
of digital games [16], is a complex phenomena that occurs across 
multiple channels and has a magnitude that is difficult to estimate 
[1,6,8,9,10,14]. It is the cause of heated debate, with pirates on 
one side and game developers, game publishers and legisla-
tors/policy makers on the other [10]. Despite the interest in game 
piracy and the controversy surrounding the activity, there is only 
limited information available on the subject that spans across 
game titles. The information that does exist often comes from 
industry organizations or operators of Peer-2-Peer (P2P) networks 
[e.g., 18], but lacks objectivity and a transparent methodology. 
The purpose of this paper is to address the need for objective 
information on digital game piracy. We report analyses on game 
piracy data obtained via tracking of the BitTorrent P2P protocol. 
 
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or 
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redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. 
FDG’11, June 29–July 1, 2011, Bordeaux, France 
Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0804-5/11/06…$10.00. 
 
The BitTorrent network was chosen because it is regarded as one 
of the main channels for game piracy and the de facto standard for 
distribution of digital files via P2P networks [2,12,18]. Monitor-
ing was carried out for 173 game titles over a three month period 
running from late 2010 to early 2011, spanning all genres and 
multiple hardware platforms (e.g., PC, X360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP), 
and the recording of 12.7 million unique peers. The analysis of 
these data indicates that the major commercial, AAA-level, ac-
tion-oriented titles account for the highest proportion of activity 
on the BitTorrent network. The distribution of the torrent activity 
across game titles was highly asymmetric. For example, the 10 
most popular titles comprised 41.5% of the total number of unique 
peers in the dataset. Finally, aggregated review scores were found 
to be positively correlated with the logarithm of the number of 
unique peers per game (p<0.05). This indicates review scores may 
be one determinant of BitTorrent activity. 
2. METHOD 
In order to obtain the data necessary for the analysis of game 
piracy, two data streams are necessary: 1) BitTorrent data on the 
online distribution of illegal copies of digital games; 2) Infor-
mation about the characteristics of these products. The steps 
towards obtaining these data are comprised of a series of steps, as 
follows (for a full description, please see Drachen et al. [7]): 
2.1 Obtaining Unique Peers from BitTorrent  
For the current study, a list of 173 game titles was compiled 
across genres and hardware platforms including Xbox360, 
PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PC, Nintendo DS (DS) and 
PlayStation Portable (PSP). This list included a series of games 
released in the fall 2010, and every game released since Novem-
ber 17th 2010 until 29th January 2011, the end of the tracking 
period (note that games can appear on BitTorrent prior to the 
official launch date). The sample consisted of games from all 
genres (irrespective of the specific definition system), ranging 
from AAA-level major commercial titles (e.g., Bioshock 2) to 
casual and indie games (e.g., Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom). 
Of these 173 titles, within the period of tracking (November 17th 
2010 to February 6th 2011), 127 were located on BitTorrent, 
indicating these games had been cracked of any copyright protec-
tion (DRM, Digital Rights Management), and released on Bit-
Torrent. During the period of tracking, 12.6 million unique peers 
were identified for all these games, making this the to date largest 
study of BitTorrent-based game piracy, surpassing even the report 
of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) from 2009, who 
reported 9.58 million downloads for about 200 unspecified titles 
produced by members of the ESA during one month in late 2009 
(no detailed information has been revealed, including methodolo-
gy and the specific titles involved). Forty of 127 titles made their 
first appearance on BitTorrent during the period of tracking (com-
prising 1.16 million unique peers).  
In order to obtain the BitTorrent metadata files [4] for the 173 
game titles, a custom web crawler was developed. The web crawl-
er periodically issues queries to a popular BitTorrent search en-
gine website for each title, extracting the metadata files. Having 
located the metadata files, the web crawler obtains the tracker 
server URIs. Having obtained the URIs, an HTTP GET request is 
issued to each URI over periodic intervals (the tracker servers are 
queried every few minutes) to obtain a list of IP addresses for the 
peers who are currently participating in sharing the specific file.  
When searching for game torrents, a number of false positives can 
occur as torrents related to a game or with a similar name may not 
contain the full game. In order to eliminate such torrents, all tor-
rent lists for each game title were manually inspected and filtered, 
leaving only the torrents that contain the full game. It is a com-
mon practice for copyright investigators to spread false infor-
mation on BitTorrent in an attempt to make it difficult for peers to 
access copyrighted material [3,5,12]. In order to filter out the false 
IP addresses, standard publicly available blacklists were applied 
to filter out IP address blocks controlled by well-known copyright 
investigators, thus ensuring that the final set of unique peers con-
sists only of real peers who are actively engaged in file sharing 
(Available from: http://www.iblocklist.com/list.php? 
list=bt_level1).  
2.2 Obtaining Game Feature Data 
A substantial challenge for the monitoring of newly released 
digital games on P2P networks and other piracy channels is that 
the game developers and publishers often do not adhere to an-
nounced release dates. This practice makes it very difficult to 
determine when tracking of a specific game title should begin. 
Given the propensity for digital games to be available on Bit-
Torrent before the official release date, the best approach is to 
start tracking the game as soon as a title is reported nearing com-
pletion (e.g., beta-testing stage). Unlike other media such as mov-
ies and music, there are no central repositories for information on 
digital games, covering release dates, sales figures, product fea-
tures etc. Instead, a wide variety of websites attempt to provide 
parts of this information with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy 
(e.g., metacritic.com, gamerankings.com, gamestats.com, vgn-
chartz.com, gamespy.com, ign.com, gamespot.com). Aggregating 
the information derived from these sites forms the best current 
approach towards obtaining the most reliable information possi-
ble. 
2.2.1 Genre 
Another challenge towards defining product features is the variety 
of digital games and the many different systems for categorizing 
games into genres. Game genre systems are nebulous at best, and 
therefore a similar aggregation approach was adopted here to 
build a genre system based on majority consensus. In practice, a 
variety of websites (e.g., mobygames.com, ign.com, 
gamespy.com, metacritic.com) were mined and genre definitions 
for the individual titles based on majority definitions.  
2.2.2 Aggregated Review Score 
In order to obtain a measure of the quality of a game title, aggre-
gated review scores were obtained from several recognized meta-
critic sites (metacritic.com, gamerankings.com, gamestats.com). 
Not all the games in the sample were available on all three of 
these sites. Aggregated scores could not be found for 12 of the 
127 torrented games. Ten of these were commercially small titles 
(e.g., Stardrone and Brain Puzzles 2). For one of these titles, 
aggregated review scores could be built manually by recording 
review scores from game sites such as gamespy.com and ign.com. 
The remainder was eliminated from any analysis involving review 
scores. Average review scores on a scale from 0-100 range from 
26 (Deca Sports Freedom) to 94.67 (Mass Effect 2), with a mean 
score of 70.44 and Std. Dev. = 15.83 (n=113).  
3. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 
Following data collection and pre-processing, the final dataset 
with BitTorrent activity and game-feature information comprised 
127 games. The BitTorrent activity data contained some noticea-
ble characteristics. The frequency distribution of unique peers per 
game was highly asymmetrical; the majority of the game titles had 
relatively limited activity on BitTorrent (i.e., less than 50,000 
unique peers observed) (Figure 1). The 10 most popular games in 
the sample accounted for 5.37 million unique peers alone (Table 
1), all of which were major commercial titles.  
Table 1: The 10 most torrented game titles encompass 5.37 
million of the unique peers in the dataset, averaging 536,727 
peers per game and an average review score of 74.5 (on a scale 
from 0-100). Genre definitions here from www.metacritic.com. 
Title Genre 
Unique 
Peers 
 
Avg. 
Review 
Score 
Developer 
Fallout: 
New Vegas 
Role-
Playing 
962,793 83.7 
Obsidian 
Entertainment 
Darksiders 
Action 
Adventure 
656,296 82.7 Vigil Games 
Need for 
Speed: Hot 
Pursuit 
Racing 656,243 88 Criterion Games 
NBA 2k11 Basketball 545,559 86.7 Visual Concepts 
TRON 
Evolution 
Action 
Adventure 
496,349 59.5 
Propaganda 
Games 
Call of 
Duty: Black 
Ops 
First-Person 
Shooter 
469,864 83.8 Treyarch 
Starcraft 2 
Real-Time 
Strategy 
420,138 89.5 
Blizzard 
Entertainment 
Star Wars 
the Force 
Unleashed 2 
Action 415,021 61 Lucas Arts 
Two Worlds 
II 
Role-
Playing 
388,236 73.3 Reality Pump 
The Sims 3: 
Late Night 
Virtual Life 
Games 
356,771 77.5 The Sims Studio 
 
In general, casual games and indie games were much less fre-
quently pirated, with a few exceptions, notably Bejeweled 3 with 
over 250,000 unique peers recorded. 
The aggregated review score of a digital game is generally ex-
pected to be linked with its financial success, although this is not 
always the case [11,13]. Similarly, it is possible that review scores 
are also related to how much a game is distributed on BitTorrent – 
which is indicated by the high proportion of major commercial 
titles in the 127 game sample, as well as the observation that 7 of 
the 10 most torrented games in the sample have aggregated review 
scores over 75 (on a 0-100 scale). In order to explore a possible 
relationship between torrent activity and aggregated review 
scores, Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient for 
Metacritic Scores (mean = 70.44, Std. Dev. = 15.83) and number 
of unique peers per game (mean = 99894.43; Std. Dev. = 
156028.6) was calculated (r= 0.28; p<0.05 significance (two-
tailed) given df = 125 (n-2)) [15]. Please note that log(unique 
peers) was used due to the non-normal distribution of the peers 
data. The result indicates a statistically significant positive rela-
tionship between the number of unique peers and aggregated 
review scores. Put differently, Metacritic Scores explain 14% of 
the variance in the unique peers per game on BitTorrent. 
 
Figure 1: Frequency distribution of the number of unique 
peers associated with the games in the dataset. 
4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 
The illegal copying and distribution of digital games stands at the 
heart of one of the central controversies in the international inter-
active entertainment environment. Despite the substantial interest 
in the problem [e.g., 6,8,9,10,12,14], the wealth of industry-based 
reports of piracy rates, and the size of the industry, there is mini-
mal objective information available about the magnitude of game 
piracy and its distribution across game titles or genres. In this 
paper, a first step has been taken towards addressing this 
knowledge gap, via the analysis of a 12.6 million unique peer 
dataset obtained from BitTorrent; the major channel for game 
piracy and  the standard for P2P distribution of [2,18]. The first 
and perhaps most important contribution of this paper is to pro-
vide objective documentation of the magnitude of distribution of 
digital game files via BitTorrent. Out of 173 game titles in the 
study, released during the fall 2010 or early 2011, 127 were found 
on BitTorrent networks. Approximately 12.6 million unique peers 
accessed these files, indicating the prevalence of game piracy via 
BitTorrent-based distribution. Unlike previous work, the data 
reported here are objective, quantitative and developed using 
state-of-the-art techniques and with a public and open methodolo-
gy. Analysis of the data indicate that it is the major commercial 
titles that are the most heavily distributed games on BitTorrent, 
with some exceptions from the more casual form. The ten most 
pirated titles encompass 5.27 million aggregated unique peers. 
Finally, the evidence presented indicate that review scores and 
torrent activity for game titles correlate positively (p<0.05). Addi-
tional analyses are available in Drachen et al. [7]. 
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
The authors would like to thank Copenhagen Business School, 
Copenhagen Entertainment and University of Colorado for their 
support. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the advice of Dr. 
Ioanna Constantiou, Copenhagen Business School. 
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