Pirates have beaten HBO to the punch. That’s exactly what happened when the first four episodes of the Game of Thrones Season 5 have leaked online a couple of days back, spoiling the popular series’ official premiere in 170 countries in the process which is slated to take place on Sunday night in the US.
According to TorrentFreak, several copies of the leaked GoT season 5 episodes were first seen on IPT, a private torrent tracker. It didn’t take long before these episodes made their way to other popular torrents sites like KickAss and TPB, and has been downloaded more than 100,000 times during the first three hours that it has been uploaded.
The sheer amount of GoT fans eager to download/watch the leaked episodes before its official premiere isn’t at all surprising, since the Game of Thrones has already earned the title as the world’s most pirated series even before these episodes were leaked online.
This, however, doesn’t change the fact that the leaked episodes will prove to be a huge blow for HBO who has been battling rampant piracy of their popular series. HBO Now was supposed to be the answer to their piracy woes (or at least lessen it), but as it turned out the pirates got the better of them.
An HBO spokesperson confirmed that the leaked episodes are indeed legit, and that it “originated from within a group approved by HBO to receive them.” That statement seems to back up TorrentFreak’s informant’s claim that the leaked episodes were early copies that were sent to the press for review.
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