I've taken a look at the top 2 torrent sites and so far between them there have been: ~13,155 and ~39,810 complete downloads under 24 hours, since the release of the torrents and more than ~67,153 currently downloading.

This is quite a significant number. Keep in mind this data is from only 2 of the top 5 torrent web sites.

It is easy to assume that if these results take less than 24Hrs to be reached, within a week there will be at least 3 to 5 times that many downloads (20K - 80K) - Per site.

These are conservative numbers, so i will use conservative speculation. However, both you and i know that the actual distribution, growth and spread of the torrents will yield numbers much higher than then current data field.

I am only taking into account the top 5 torrent sites, leaving out the thousands of others.

Thus, we can consider "conservatively", that even if half of those numbers were met, and i know you might be thinking, why not just assume the entire 100K per site, we all know it's gonna be more than that anyway? True, I am not doing myself justice, i know, but i don't want to sound like i am biased either. Rather quite the opposite, I want to illustrate that even half of those numbers would outweigh anything the PC community could do, keeping in mind we are only 15-20% of the COD entourage.

The issue with making an estimation of this sort is that the costumer base is not unlimited. There is only so many people who have PCs and only so many people who have XBOX 360s. So in making exponential estimations, i am aware that it would be illogical to assume a constant download rate ie. 10K per day. On the contrary it is more likely there will be a peak number of download at a certain day after the release of the torrent, after which the rate for the remainder of the week will begin to scale down.

So.

7 Days.
First 24 Hours: ~53,000 Downloads (2 websites)

I am going to assume a 16% download decrease per day for the duration of a week in order to be "conservative" and simulate an expending customer base. AND just to be outrageously nice i am going to add another 16% per day.

Keep in mind the actual numbers will be much higher than this. Like i said, i don't want to be biased.

Day 2: 44520 (-16%)
Day 3: 37397 (-32%)
Day 4: 25430 (-48%)
Day 5: 13224 (-64%)
Day 6: 4761 (-80%)
Day 7: 853 (-90%)

TOTAL: ~179,185 Downloads in a week from 2 websites this is excluding the around 67 thousand that are still currently downloading for the consoles. If you voided day 3 and 4 to compensate for these, you'd be left with only the quota for days 6 and 7, which is about 19,000 downloads. Considering the numbers for only 1 day, i think it is safe to say another 19,000 illegal XBOX 360 pirated copies of the game will be downloaded by the end of the week, making these numbers very very actual and just as conservative keeping in mind it is only from 2 of the top 5 and other hundreds and thousands of torrent resources on the web.

The initial download mass, will probably be about 85% of the pirates. That is all the hardcore pirates who will be downloading it 5 minutes after the upload. After the frenzy, there will be a steady rate of downloads that will go on for a couple of years: that is everyone else who just wants to try the game. This will be around a couple of hundred (100s) downloads per day per torrent site.

This is the most ridiculously nice calculation i can do for IW. The actual truth is, those numbers will be much greater, when you consider the thousands of torrent sites around the world and all the jarateed of gamers due to their decision to remove dedicated server. Wait, wha? - aren't dedicated servers for the PC gamers? - True, but many PC gamers like myself also own a console and i will be boycotting the game on all my platforms.

NOW consider that the PC community is only around ~20% of the COD base. You can imagine how much more severe piracy is on consoles. It is a lot cheaper to buy an X-BOX360 to play games, than it is a high end PC. And nowadays you don't even have to mod-chip your game through hardware. It is all done via software.

If you ask me. I'd say console piracy is much greater than PC piracy when it comes to games like this.
Whenever a game comes out. The first torrents to hit the web are ALWAYS X-Box 360, followed by PC and PS3.

I think the simple fact that Activision is trying to capitalize on the PC market by removing dedicated servers and controlling content, in itself proves how lucrative the PC community is as a profit machine. Otherwise they would have dropped us entirely, since we account for such a small portion of the fan base. If you ask me the only reason they are still milking the PC community, is because they know all the piracy statistics on the web for PC users are way, way higher than the truth, and they know there is money to be made.

Don't forget these are XBOX 360 pirates only. PS ISO isn't even out yet as far as i know and i'm not sure how that's gonna work out anyway. It will probably just be a STEAM RIP.

In my estimation by the time we are done; there will be at least 2.5 to 3.1 Million illegally downloaded copies of this game. And that increase will be directly proportional to Activisions decision to remove Dedicated servers, among other things...

Some Pirate Statistics:
# game downloads released

1 Spore----------------------------------(1,700,000)--------(Sept. 2008)
2 The Sims 2--------------------------(1,150,000)--------(Sept. 2004)
3 Assassins Creed------------------(1,070,000)--------(Nov. 2007)
4 Crysis----------------------------------(940,000)----------(Nov. 2007)
5 Command & Conquer 3-----------(860,000)----------(Mar. 2007)
6 Call of Duty 4----------------------------(830,000)----------(Nov. 2007)
7 GTA San Andreas----------------------(740,000)----------(Jun. 2005)
8 Fallout 3-----------------------------------(645,000)----------(Oct. 2008)
9 Far Cry 2-----------------------------------(585,000)----------(Oct. 2008)
10 Pro Evolution Soccer 2009----------(470,000)---------(Oct. 2008)

PS to IW: If you delete this thread again it only means you are threatened by it in some way.

pirated game on a modded xbox to play it = playing with fire

Ouch, they are definately going to feel this one in the wallet. Although I don't think that will help our cause for Dedi servers...

pirated game on a modded xbox to play it = playing with fire

At this point I don't even care about the Dedi servers - there's a pretty solid chance I still wouldn't buy it anyway even if they patched it in down the road. All the blank over the last few weeks has pretty much permanently removed me from the customer base.

Now I just hope that the game gets pirated so bad they implode and go out of business, making room for a new game company to come up and actually give a s*** about people other than XBL and PSN kiddies.