According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), who claim to have conducted in-depth studies on 200 specific games, around 9.78 million illegal copies of games were downloaded in the month of December 2009 alone.
The ESA worked with the International Intellectual Property Alliance to track the sharing activity of 200 popular games across the most popular torrent sharing platforms in use.
Due to the fact that the ESA only tracked 200 games, they expect that the number will be even higher than indicated by the study.
The ESA found that the biggest culprit for downloading pirate games was the USA, and the report made a request to the US Trade Representative to list 35 countries on a “priority watch list” including nations such as Mexico, Brazil and Canada. The ESA believes that the countries listed have not provided adequate response to piracy problems.
Other countries that were foud guilty of high game pirate traffic were Itay with 20.3-percent of total pirate traffic, Spain with 12.5-percent, France with 7.5-percent and China with 5.6-Percent.
Interestingly, Italy is known for its subpar internet infrastructure. Despite this, it is still a pirate heavy nation.
The degree to which these figures are accurate remains a contentious issue, as the ESA has given little indication of its methods. However, the ESA has implored the USA to consider applying trade sanctions to better control file sharing. This however would require a massive effort on the part of various governments, and it is highly unlikely that any sort of control will be imposed on file sharing anytime soon.
