Foxtel subscribers were left scratching their heads during the Game of Thrones season premiere as high demand for the program caused the streaming service to glitch and crash.
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The show cemented its place in streaming history with more than 800,000 people across the country tuning into Foxtel Now for episode one.
In a statement to Fairfax Media, a Foxtel spokesman said the company was “devastated” to be experiencing problems with their online services.
“The show’s producer and U.S. broadcaster, HBO, reported its technical systems could not cope,” he said.
“The surge of demand for Foxtel’s recently launched online product, Foxtel Now experienced customer meltdown.”
Complaints started coming in at 6:00pm and surged at 8:30pm as the encore came around, according to InternetOutages.
A crash of this kind could stem from the lack of digital infrastructure in place to help cope with high traffic demand, according to Wagga technical strategist Michael Meyer.
“When there is congestion of any kind, the server can stop responding,” he said.
“The server can shut down as a result.”
The Foxtel Now streaming service is the only legal way Australians can watch the show. Many GoT fans expressed their displeasure at the outage on social media.
