GOT Prequel “House of the Dragon” Premiered Early on Pirate Sites

When it comes to piracy records and juicy headlines, the original Game of Thrones series holds the crown.

The popular TV series still holds the record for the largest torrent swarm and its releases caused a significant boost in global piracy traffic.

Game of Thrones also made headlines on several occasions when episodes leaked online before their official premiere. This is a hard track record for the prequel “House of the Dragon” to compete with, but early signs show that the ‘leak’ tradition continues.

“House of the Dragon” Piracy Premiere

The first “House of the Dragon” episode premiered on Sunday 9 pm Eastern Time in the United States and it was simulcasted in many other countries around the world. However, when fans were getting ready for the official release, many pirates had already finished the episode.

Pirated copies of the highly anticipated release surfaced roughly 15 hours before the official release. The source of ‘leak’ is unknown, but it appears to come from an official HBO feed that was made available early.

Whatever the source, fans were quick to spot this surprise release. While many preferred to wait until the official release was out, hundreds of thousands were not that patient and chose to download or stream the pirated version instead.

Massive Interest

Before the official premiere, hundreds of thousands of people had already grabbed a ‘leaked’ copy through torrent sites. In addition, many more used pirate streaming sites to watch the “House of the Dragon” premiere.

As a result, the early release of “House of the Dragon” was the most pirated TV show on Sunday, even before the official version came out. The piracy figures don’t rival any records set by Game of Thrones just yet, but the show is on its way to becoming one of the most pirated shows of the year.

There has been plenty of interest through legal channels as well. In fact, some people indicated that they preferred to wait until the official version came out.

HBO Max Crashes

According to HBO, millions of people ‘legally’ tuned into the show on Sunday evening, which is a lot for a show premiere. While torrents generally benefit from widespread attention, the same can’t be said for centralized streaming platforms.

This resulted in some small problems, including HBO crashing on Fire TV devices. Whether any of these Fire TV users turned to pirate alternatives out of frustration is unknown, but HBO may want to fix this problem before the next episode comes out.

The early signs suggest that “House of the Dragon” will be good for some piracy headlines going forward. In addition to the early premiere, HBO previously had its hands full with a mystery Reddit user who leaked plot summaries for the upcoming season.