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With the official debut of this season's episode one of Game of Thrones, millions of people around the world have been eagerly watching to find out what is set to happen to some of their favourite characters. Not everyone did so through official channels though. Indeed, more than a million people have downloaded the show from illegal sites and services already.
Game of Thrones has been the most pirated show in the world for the past few years. In 2014 it set new records and that was again trumped in 2015 when the 5th season aired. While we aren't quite ready call Guinness this week, season six is off to a strong start, with even now more than 100,000 people actively sharing the first episode.
Yesterday that number was far higher, as TorrentFreak points out. We're likely well past 1.5 million downloads at this point in time and that's only via torrents. As illegitimate streaming services and private trackers provide additional illegal viewing options, the total of people who watched the show without paying for the privilege could easily be north of two million.
Viewers seem to come from all over the world too, with the highest percentage (12.5 per cent) coming from Australia, while the UK contributed to just shy of seven per cent of that total.
While HBO will no doubt go to some effort to curtail those watching the show illegally, the fact that so many fans of the show choose not to go down the official route, is telling. Whether it's because of a dedicated viewing time as opposed to on-demand viewing, the fact that it's locked behind a paywall or the varied broadcast times around the world, clearly HBO hasn't managed to offer a product everyone is willing to pay for.
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KitGuru Says: If you pirate Game of Thrones, what's your reasoning? Do you not want to pay for Sky? Do you want it to be shown at the same time around the world?
It’s not that they don’t offer a product everyone is willing to pay for, it’s that it isn’t 1996 and delaying the shows outside the US is no longer tolerated.
Frankly, I have no intentions to pirate anything.
What annoys me, however, is that GoT is being locked to a Sky and NowTV only channel.
We moved away from Sky toward the end of the year, as a result of them trying to impose a new contract on us which was going to heavily limit our internet activity (They wanted to impose a 20GB limit on a family of 4) so that we could drop a few TV channels we didn’t watch any more. A family who have been Sky customers since they first started providing TV subscription, then into Broadband.
With our new provider, we do not have access to Sky Atlantic, so the only option if we want to reliably avoid the frustration of inevitable spoilers is to pirate the series (Yes we could go on a media blackout around it, but that’s a very unreliably method).
It feels like Sky are once again trying to force people who love a certain show to subscribe to their frankly terrible service.
i am in Australia and i would be willing to pay for the show but its behind a pay wall that is insane (cable tv) its 46AUD, 52EURO, 52GBP for the base pack and the drama pack to get the channel you need 46/4=11.5 per ep thats insane it cheaper to buy the series on blu-ray at that rate and at 10ep for the season $115
Couldn’t agree more. In the age of social media TV spoilers are instantaneous. I woke up on Monday morning to dozens of articles about the first episode. If I had had to have waited to the Monday 9pm showing, the episode would have been compromised for me. Luckily with Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic have the 2am simulcast.
There isn’t a show I watch that doesn’t appear on a channel I have paid legal access to. But I am not very willing to wait weeks or even months for that channel to show it. Worse still when they don’t air a show at all in your country.
With every major channel now having an online presence, there is no excuse for not having global release dates. And with DVRs the norm, watching online is a broadcasters best chance of forcing a viewer to watch advertising!
Just gotta get HBO NOW… I mean it’s $14.95 a month, but your first month is free.. Then you just cancel whenever..
Oh they delay it? That sux. I’m in Canada and they release at same 9pm Sunday. I’d probably not wait either for a full day when spoilers would be everywhere.
HBO censors the show in India, even swears, India is really a backward minded country with different standards, aslong as they keep censoring things on television, i’ll never watch it on TV
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