Controversial 'Walking Dead' Premiere Sees Dramatic Increase in Piracy Since Last Season

A lot of people tuned in to watch Negan kill some favs Sunday, but that didn't stop anyone from pirating it.

October 26, 2016

Norman Reedus on 'The Walking Dead' — Image via AMC

As expected, an unfathomably gigantic amount of people tuned in to see who exactly got a face-to-face encounter with Negan's BFF Lucille on the season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead Sunday. 17 million, to be exact. But that doesn't mean a few hundred thousand peeps hesitated to just illegally download the heartbreaker instead.

In fact, The Walking Dead-related piracy has actually increased since last year. Piracy-tracking group Tecxipio measured approximately 600,544 downloads of "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be," Varietyreported Tuesday. That number, accumulated within the first 24 hours of the episode's availability alone, is up noticeably from last year's season 6 premiere total of 569,772 downloads.

Though this increasingly lame nation was the biggest offender in terms of The Walking Dead piracy for the season 6 kickoff, both Brazil and France are currently besting the United States following Negan's depressing AF introduction. Brazil leads the pack with 175,724 illegal downloads of the season 7 premiere, with France (153,729 downloads) and the United States (150,582 downloads) following relatively close behind.

Well shit. With all this piracy going down, surely the biggest show on TV is done for good and TV itself is OVER, right? Nah. AMC already renewed The Walking Dead for an eighth season, and that happened well before Negan's bat (FUCKING SPOILER ALERT) took out Glenn and Abraham with enough gore to get pissed (and lame) parents all bent out of shape about the limits of TV-MA.