Amazon Releases Statement About ‘Game of Thrones’ Leak

Amazon has expressed their “regret” after accidentally leaking Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 2, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” hours ahead of its scheduled premiere.

Although the second episode was slated to premiere on HBO at 9 p.m. ET, fans hoping for a spoiler-free Sunday were left battling spoilers like the North is about to battle the army of the dead after fans reported that Amazon Prime Germany had uploaded the second episode as early as 3 p.m. ET, roughly six hours ahead of its scheduled release.

After hearing the outcry and taking notice of the issue, an Amazon spokesperson released a statement apologizing for the leak.

“We regret that for a short time Amazon customers in Germany were able to access episode two of season eight of Game of Thrones,” an Amazon spokesman said in a statement to the BBC. “This was an error and has been rectified.”

Although the issue was “rectified,” it wasn’t done soon enough to prevent spoilers from making their rounds online. Within just a matter of hours, screengrabs and plot details from episode 2 were spreading on various social media platforms, leading to a mixed bag of reactions from fans.

“Hello #GoT fandom, those leaks unfortunately tend to happen with such a massive show like Game of Thrones, but let’s try not put the spoilers out there and respect all the hard work of the entire cast, producers and directors,” one person wrote. “It’s the last year. Let’s try to enjoy the best way!”

“May all the hackers be successful in hacking HBO for the entire season, and may they leak all the episodes at once,” another fan of both the series and leaks tweeted.

Amazon isn’t alone with episode leaks. Hours ahead of the Season 8 premiere, some lucky DirecTV Now customers were able to view the episode after it was accidentally uploaded at around 5 p.m. ET. Just as with the Amazon Prime leak, the spoilers for the episode were quickly spread on social media, and DirecTV fixed the issue as soon as they were made aware of it.

“Apparently our system was as excited as we are for Game of Thrones tonight and gave a few DIRECTV Now customers early access to the episode by mistake,” a spokesperson for AT&T, which owns DirecTV, said in a statement. “When we became aware of the error, we immediately fixed it, and we look forward to tuning in this evening.”

New episodes of Game of Thrones air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. The series is scheduled to conclude on Sunday, May 19 at 9 p.m. ET.