Game of Thrones: 'Kill the Boy' downloaded 2.2m times in less than 12 hours beating previous piracy records

The news comes just a month after HBO launched their Netflix-like subscription service HBO Now

Sansa and Ramsay Bolton dine together at Winterfell (HBO)

While the first four Game of Thrones episodes were leaked online before release, the fifth episode of season five only became available after it actually aired on HBO.

Titled ‘Kill the Boy’, the 12 hours following its on-air debut saw the episode being downloaded by over 2.2 million individual Internet users, breaking the one-day piracy record previously held by *you guessed it* Game of Thrones.

According to piracy-tracking company Excipio via Variety, the first torrent was available to download just after the episode aired at 9pm in the US.

As of 10am the next morning, 2.2 million internet addresses were confirmed to have downloaded the episode, breaking the previous record held by season four's premiere by more than half a million.

The news comes just a month after HBO launched HBO Now, an on-demand subscription service much like Netflix, in partnership with Apple.

One reason the episode may have been downloaded so many times is because it this service is only available in the US, meaning viewers in the UK and other countries have to wait up to 24 hours to legally watch it.

However, while this may be the case, the US still had the highest number of pirates in the world with over 214,468 downloaders so far. The UK comes in fifth, with 107,857 downloaders so far.

The medieval drama has been the most pirated TV show for the last three years in a row, being downloaded an estimated eight million times last year alone. Could pirates be about to top this? After all, the first four episodes were illegally downloaded 32 million times in just one week.

Kill The Boy will be broadcast for UK viewers on Sky Atlantic tonight at 9pm.