The German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU) revealed in a survey of 43 high-traffic German file-hosting websites that more than half were linking visitors to unauthorized copies of games – eight of them were exclusively offering games. But the survey notably shows that these site operators are increasingly listing download links to pirated games for handheld devices.

On these linking sites, the share of links to PC games across the entire range of games has fallen from 48% at the end of 2009 to 31% (end 2010). Though there was significant growth in the number of game titles for PlayStation 3, the supply of links to illegal games for these consoles increased only by 2%. In sharp contrast, during the same period, the proportion of catalogued links to games files for handheld devices has risen from 34% to 49% – 24% to 36% for Nintendo DS and 10% to 13% for PSP.

In console games, the titles offered for the Playstation 3 has exploded since September last year, to nearly 2,230 links, and with growth rates of up to 200% in November. In this console games segment, file-hoster’s linking sites most frequently provided access to pirated games files for the two Sony consoles (PS2 and PS3 with a combined total of 9,281 links), followed by games for the Nintendo Wii (8,041 links) and in third place those for Microsoft consoles Xbox and Xbox 360 (6,505 links).

One of the games-only file-hosting portals that gets more traffic than the German federal government site, according to the web information service Alexa.

Story filed 06.02.11