“Kill The Boy” Sets All New Piracy Record

I suppose that, once you’re in the habit of watching pirated episodes, it’s hard to go back to plain old TV. Last night’s Game of Thrones episode, “Kill The Boy,” was the first episode this season that wasn’t part of the leaked set that surfaced the night before the premiere aired. It’s making up for lost time, though. As of 10:00 AM EST, a mere 12 hours after the episode concluded, it had already been downloaded a record 2.2 million times.

According to Variety:

The first pirated copies of HBO’s popular fantasy epic showed up on file-sharing sites shortly after it aired in the U.S. at 9 p.m. ET Sunday, according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio. The 2.2 million individual Internet addresses tracked by the firm were recorded as of 10 a.m. ET Monday.

To put this in perspective, Game of Thrones last shattered a piracy record in June of last year, when “The Children,” last year’s finale, was pirated 1.86 million times in 24 hours. (About 1.5 million in 12 hours.) Last night’s episode, a mid-season plot-mover about which one Unsullied complained to me that “not much happened,” is already on track to be downloaded over twice as much as “The Children” was over that same period of time. If it wasn’t for the huge swarm that occurred the first week Game of Thrones was back on the air this year, “Kill the Boy” would probably be on track to break the all-time record. And we’re only on episode 5 of the season.

So much for HBO Now being the legal content provider that plugs the leak in the dam. HBO is going to have to taker much broader measures next season if they’re looking to stem this tide.

• Published on 05/11/2015 at 4:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT