'Game of Thrones' Premiere Crashes HBO Website

HBO's website was no match for the White Walkers on Sunday night.
The cable network's main website, HBO.com, was down during the seventh-season premiere of Game of Thrones. People who attempted to go to the website were met with an error message saying there was a problem loading the page. But the website returned to working order during the final half of the episode's East Coast premiere.
HBO Now, the network's over-the-top video streaming service, also wasn't loading for some viewers during the first half of the episode, which becomes available for all viewers at the same time regardless of the time zone. Some viewers who logged into the service were met with a loading bar and could not access the new episode; others complained about slow buffering.
Some fans trying to watch the premiere took to Twitter to express their displeasure, some tweeting pictures of their television screens and complaining about their inability to watch the show. Others tweeted that they were able to view the episode on Now, indicating that the problem wasn't affecting all users.
A spokeswoman for HBO told The Hollywood Reporter that HBO Go was experiencing outages in Latin America on Sunday and that the team in the region was working to resolve the problems. But she added that HBO hadn't seen any widespread on HBO Go or HBO Now in the United States.
Sunday evening's Game of Thrones premiere has been much anticipated after HBO delayed production on the seventh season, ultimately pushing back the show's return to television airwaves.
HBO has offered Now, which people can sign up for without a cable subscription for $15 a month, since 2015. The cable network also offers HBO go as a streaming option for its cable subscribers.
HBO Now suffered similar outages in 2016 during the "Battle of the Bastards" episode of Thrones last season. Go, meanwhile, hasn't experienced widespread problems since the fourth season premiere of Game of Thrones in 2014. That year, the service also suffered from a crash during the finale of the first season of True Detective. Go did not appear to suffer from the same outages as Now on Sunday evening.
The seventh season of Game of Thrones is bringing about the return of beloved characters including Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). It will run for a shortened seven episodes before returning for its final season.
July 16, 6:54 p.m. Updated to indicate that HBO.com had resumed service and to include a response from HBO.