According to estimates by TorrentFreak, each episode of the show’s second season was illegally downloaded by over four million people internationally, with the majority of downloads in the week following the episode’s broadcast debut. The high level of piracy is due, certainly, to the show’s popularity, but also to the scarcity of online viewing options for content from the premium cable channel, something HBO is finally reconsidering.

Piracy almost sounds like a good problem to have, if you listen to some of the people involved with Game of Thrones; certainly David Petrarca, one of the show’s directors, appeared to suggest that the piracy was merely a sign of the show’s success during an appearance in Australia earlier this year — a comment he later walked back with a statement that he was “100 percent, completely and utterly against people illegally downloading anything.”