With 6.6 million viewers on television, the fourth season premier of "Game of Thrones" broke its previous record from last year's 5.5 million. This made "GoT" the most watched show in HBO history since "The Sopranos" series finale in 2007.
Besides being the most-watched episode, the premiere also marked the second time streaming service, HBO Go, crashed due to the high demand. The last time was during "True Detective" finale in March, which only had nearly half of the "GoT" audience, with 3.5 million viewers.
HBO Go's official Twitter account said, "Looks like there's trouble in the realm. Apologies for the inconvenience. We'll be providing updates, so please stay tuned."
Later, it tweeted again, saying, "Having trouble accessing @HBO GO? Send a raven. @GameOfThrones will be available soon on HBO On Demand with some cable providers."
But Go subscribers were less than amused, and had their say online, which resulted to the network issuing a more formal apology later in the evening.
In all likelyhood, not everyone who were affected by the site's crash are paying customers. Accroding to CS Monitor, it is quantifiable that many people watch their favorite shows using login information and passwords given to them by friends or family. It was even remarked upon by Twitter users, one of which tweeted, "Hey, come on HBO Go, one of my roommate's parents [grandparents?] are paying good money for this."
Besides garnering the honor of having the most-watched episode, "Game of Thrones" also earned the title for being the most pirated television show, according to Torrent Freak, with 5.9 million downloads via BitTorrent, in 2013 alone.
Time Warner CEO, Jeff Bewkes, told Forbes, "Our experience is that [piracy] leads to more paying subs."
He also added that being the most pirated show is an honor that is "better than an Emmy."