Game of Thrones must be an awesome show because it is consistently the most popular pirated TV show in the world. First Game of Thrones topped the charts for most pirated TV show of 2012. Now season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones, which aired on March 31, 2013 in the United States on HBO, has set a new record for most number of simultaneous peers in a swarm (a swarm is the total number of people downloading/uploading a torrent).

According to TorrentFreak, a “few hours” after a torrent of Season 3 Episode 1 for Game of Thrones hit the web, there were 163,088 peers for the torrent — 110,303 were sharing (uploading) the torrent (they already downloaded it) while 52,786 were downloading. This gives Game of Thrones S3E1 the title for torrent with the largest swarm ever. The previous record, 144,663, was held by Heroes Season 3 Episode 1.

In total, across all the torrents of the episode, it is estimated that over 1 million people torrented Game of Thrones S3E1 in less than 24 hours. Not bad considering an estimated 4.37 million people watched the episode live on TV in the United States when it aried. And the fact that number of downloads has only increased since then.

So is this bad news for HBO and Game of Thrones? Nope. In fact, HBO and Game of Thrones director and staff actually think piracy is a good thing. How’s that for some juicy gossip.

[via TorrentFreak, CNN]