House of The Dragon Season Finale Leaks Early on Pirate Sites

The season finale of HBO's "House of the Dragon" has leaked online, two days ahead of its official premiere. The popular Game of Thrones prequel was already quite popular among pirates and this release is drawing even more attention. The source of the leak is unclear but the Hebrew subtitles could be a hint.

house of dragonsThe debut of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” in August didn’t disappoint. Since then it has averaged dozens of millions of views per episode.

The show was also an instant success on pirate sites where, in true Game of Thrones spirit, it was leaked before the official premiere.

In the weeks that followed “House of The Dragon” crushed “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” in the unofficial pirate download rankings. At this rate, it’s on track to become the most pirated TV show of the year. And today’s news certainly doesn’t hurt that ‘aspiration’.

A few hours ago, copies of the tenth episode appeared on Usenet and pirate sites, two days before the general public will have access to it on legal platforms. News of the leak is spreading quickly and tens of thousands of people have already grabbed an illicit copy.

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It wouldn’t be a major surprise to see these download statistics exceed more than a million copies before Sunday. Significant numbers of people will also watch the episode through pirate streaming sites, which will boost the numbers even further.

The source of the leak remains unknown at the time of writing but there are some data points that may help to narrow things down. The video comes in 25fps, which eliminates countries such as the US, Japan, and Brazil.

In addition, a trusted source informs us that the original release came with Hebrew subtitles in a separate .srt file. These original releases are typically shared on private servers, which act as central points before distribution groups start sharing them on pirate sites.

We were not able to verify this information independently, but it could be a hint that there are links to Israel.

No matter what the source is, it will be hard to do anything about it now. The company and its licensing partners will likely spend much of the weekend sending takedown requests but for HBO, most of the damage is already done.