Popcorn Time, which in its day was the reference for watching pirated movies and series, has announced its sudden closure after a few difficult years for the platform.
When Popcorn Time was first released on the Internet, it was revolutionary. Until then, the most reliable way to pirate content was to use P2P networks like BitTorrent to download the files one by one to the computer. Ironically, paying for a Netflix subscription was so much easier, as we have all the movies we could ever want just a click away.
Popcorn Time applied the way Netflix works to piracy, which is why it was so popular. It was also based on BitTorrent, with the difference that it allowed videos to be played while they were being downloaded; so, with a good connection, we didn’t have to wait for the whole file to download, we could start watching the movie instantly.
All this, of course, for free. Not surprisingly, in the same year that Popcorn Time launched, Netflix declared that its main competitor was piracy, and not other similar services.
The development of Popcorn Time was controversial, and the original developers themselves abandoned it as soon as it achieved some notoriety on the Internet; Since then, it has changed hands a couple of times thanks to its open source code, which allows anyone to copy and distribute it. Still, Popcorn Time never quite matched its early success, and usage steadily dropped.
Finally, this week the owners of the domain have thrown in the towel, and have closed the website. The reason is very simple and they show it on the page itself: the interest in Popcorn Time is at the lowest levels in its history, and it has been replaced for years by other methods of piracy; Not only that, but official streaming services are becoming more and more popular, and for many people, they are no longer worth pirating. Speaking to , the current owners of the pirate service confirm that “the world no longer needs Popcorn Time.”
However, the fall of its great rival should not be a cause for celebration for Netflix, which in any case is in a worse situation than in 2015. To begin with, piracy has not disappeared, it has only evolved with new methods such as dedicated streaming sites and systems.
But above all, the streaming market is now much more distributed, with the arrival of alternatives such as Disney + and HBO Max, which is forcing Netflix to invest heavily in original content that does not depend on other producers; And while that investment is spawning hits like Squid Game, it’s also spawning flops like Cowboy Bebop.
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