Game of Thrones season seven was pirated over one billion times, despite being the most-watched run ever.
According to piracy solutions agency MUSO, the latest season exceeded one billion illegal downloads and streams across piracy channels by September 3, eclipsing the average of 31 million an episode for legal viewings.
The season seven premiere 'Dragonstone' quickly became the most pirated show of 2017 and it remained the most pirated of the season with 187.4m global downloads and streams.
It was closely followed by 184.9m global downloads and streams for episode six 'Beyond the Wall', with episode three 'The Queen's Justice' amassing the fewest with 116m, which is obviously still pretty bad.
Streaming activity accounted for 85% of the season seven piracy, with torrents and private trackers making up less than 10% of the billion downloads and streams.
Even with the piracy landmark, Game of Thrones set new US ratings records for both its finale at 16.5m viewers and the season as a whole with its 31m average viewers per episode, up 34% on last year.
That's despite the numerous leaks that hit season seven, with episode four leaking online – but not due to the HBO hack – and episode six being leaked after a massive blunder by HBO Spain.
At least the finale didn't leak online in a big way as was threatened by the HBO hackers.
