The upcoming sixth episode of season 7 was accidentally released on HBO Espana and HBO Nordic four days ahead of schedule.
- Aug 17, 2017
AceShowbiz - "Game of Thrones" is suffering from another premature release. HBO's European and Spain divisions accidentally posted the sixth episode of season 7 onto their on-demand subscribers, four days ahead of schedule. The episode titled "Beyond the Wall" was available for a full hour before it was removed.
"We have learned that the upcoming episode of Game Of Thrones was accidently posted for a brief time on the HBO Nordic and HBO Espana platforms," said HBO Europe spokesperson Tom Krogsgaard Nielsen. "The error appears to have originiated with a third party vendor and the episode was removed as soon as it was recognized. This is not connected to the recent cyber incident at HBO in the U.S."
But it only takes "a brief time" for the episode to be ripped and illegally distributed around the globe. Footage of the episode was posted to Reddit and has been shared via YouTube, Twitch and other streaming providers. The full episode was posted on torrent sites.
Earlier this month, the fourth episode of "Thrones" was leaked online. The breach came from distribution partner Star India, whose logo appears as a watermark in the pirated copy of the episode. Four arrests have been made in Mumbai related to the leak. Police say the theft was committed by current and former employees of Prime Focus Technologies, the data-management company hired by Sky India.
Despite the leak, the fourth episode titled "The Spoils of War" hit all-time ratings high when it aired on HBO, with 10.2 million overnight viewers. The record was soon broken by the fifth episode, "Eastwatch", which pulled in 10.7 million viewers overnight.
HBO is currently still dealing with hackers who claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. The hackers demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom and has threatened to dump more information from the stolen data and videos of future shows online.
"Beyond the Wall" will air on HBO Sunday, August 20 at 9 P.M. Photos of the episode have been officially released, previewing Jon Snow on his mission at north of the Wall.
