‘Game of Thrones’ Piracy Spurs HBO’s Move to Streaming-Only Screeners

After years of mailing out DVDs to critics and journalists, HBO is shifting to a streaming-only policy for advance reviews of its programming.

The move had already been in the works but was accelerated by last month’s leak of the “Game of Thrones” season five opener, which made its way on to online piracy sites from an advance DVD screener.

Quentin Schaffer, HBO’s exec VP of corporate communications, alerted reporters to the change on Monday. The change takes affect as of Tuesday with the next batch of “Veep” episodes to be made available through HBO’s secure streaming site.