Refusing to Watch the 4 Leaked Episodes of Game of Thrones' Season 5

As of last night, the first four episodes of the new Game of Thrones season, nearly half of the ten total episodes, have been leaked online to various torrent sites. After appearing online yesterday afternoon, the episodes have already been downloaded almost 800,000 times. This is bad news for HBO, which is attempting to marry the recent debut of their HBO Now streaming service with season 5 of Game of Thrones. They are relying on the new season to push their $15 a month, standalone HBO Now service. HBO Now will allow people whom are not subscribed to HBO on their cable devices to have the chance to stream HBO shows and movies at a monthly cost. But now pirates who may have been considering making the switch to a legal means of consumption can now watch the first four episodes of the show right this moment, so it may negate their motivation to try out Now. How this happened isn’t a mystery. The press has had their hands on four episodes worth of press screeners for a while now, so someone that was trusted with those review materials clearly should not have been. CEO Jeff Bewkes stated, “Our experience is [piracy] leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising… If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. Well, you know, that’s better than an Emmy.”

For anyone who calls themselves a true fan, watching four episodes of the show right now and waiting a month for the others is an awful way to experience the show.  Game of Thrones is one of the last true “event” shows where it’s something you want to talk about Sunday night or Monday morning with friends and strangers alike. It’s a core part of the experience.