It's not easy being popular. Just ask "Call of Duty: Black Ops." It seems everyone wants to get their hands on a copy of the game ... only not everyone wants to pay for it.
Activision's hit shooter was the most pirated game of the year, according to TorrentFreak, a blog that covers BitTorrent and filesharing news.
The PC version of "Black Ops," which launched on Nov. 9, has already been downloaded 4,270,000 by people using the popular peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. The Xbox 360 version of the game was downloaded another 930,000 times.
This isn't the first time the popular first-person shooting franchise has "won" this dubious award. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" was the most pirated game of 2009, according to TorrentFreak.
As for this year, the second most pirated game was "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" and the third was "Mafia 2," both for PC.
According to TorrentFreak, PC games are by far the most downloaded games, averaging more than three times the number of downloads compared to Xbox 360 and Wii games.
For the Xbox 360, "Dante's Inferno" was the most the pirated game with 1,280,000 flying through BitTorrent. And "Super Mario Galaxy 2" was the most illegally downloaded game for the Wii.
The folks at TorrentFreak say they came up with their numbers based on reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. For a look at TorrentFreak's complete list of top-pirated games, check out this link.
On the bright side, "Call of Duty: Black Ops" also had the biggest launch sales of any entertainment medium ever and has already made more than $1 billion in retail sales. So at least some people are paying for "Black Ops" ... okay, maybe even more than "some."
For more on this topic, check out:
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'Call of Duty' enlists Kimmel cameo, body hair unboxing
Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.
