Game of Thrones Tops the Most Illegally Downloaded Shows of 2016

Back in 2015, Game of Thrones ended its fifth season on a jaw-dropping cliffhanger: Jon Snow was killed at the hands of his own Night’s Watch brethren. Then rumors started that Kit Harington, who plays Snow in the HBO series, was still loitering around set. Was he just hanging out with his friends? Or was Jon Snow not actually dead?

To find out, millions of people tuned in to the premiere of the show’s sixth season on HBO this past April—and if they didn’t have access to HBO (or their parents’ HBO GO account), they downloaded the show from torrent sites. At least that’s what we can gather from TorrentFreak, an online publication that calculates (among other things) the number of times shows are illegally downloaded. And for the fifth year in a row, Game of Thrones topped the list of most pirated shows.

TorrentFreak reported The Walking Dead, which also ended on an intense cliffhanger, came in second place, followed by HBO’s latest hit, Westworld. Rounding out the top ten were The Flash, Arrow, The Big Bang Theory, Vikings, Lucifer, Suits and Amazon’s show about British car enthusiasts, The Grand Tour.

Interestingly, an earlier report suggested The Grand Tour was the most illegally downloaded show ever. But Muso, the anti-piracy firm who calculated that particular data, is now saying the show might only be the most pirated in the UK, according to Digital Spy.

[H/T Mashable]