'Game of Thrones' Is a Hit With TV Pirates, Too More than a few fans of "Game of Thrones" are so eager for the murder, villainy, depravity and wedding banquets gone horribly wrong depicted on that series that they don't mind engaging in a little piracy to see the show. The hit HBO fantasy series enjoyed the dubious distinction of placing first on a list of the year's most pirated television shows, compiled by TorrentFreak.com. According to that website's figures, "Game of Thrones" was responsible for an estimated 5.9 million illegal downloads using the BitTorrent file-sharing software. By comparison, first-run broadcasts of "Game of Thrones" drew about 5 million viewers each this season. First-run episodes of the show are legally available only through HBO and its on-demand services. Placing second on the most-pirated list was AMC's "Breaking Bad," which generated 4.2 million illegal downloads, according to TorrentFreak.com, followed by AMC's "The Walking Dead" in third place with 3.6 million downloads. The list also included the CBS comedies "The Big Bang Theory" and "How I Met Your Mother," the Showtime political thriller "Homeland" and the CW action-adventure series "Arrow."