Official Popcorn Time has been discontinued

Engadget said Popcorn Time, which was once famous for streaming pirated movies, has been shut down as a rival platform to Netflix. Its original developers had discontinued the service and left the project a few days after its launch in 2014. But because the project was open source, other developers were able to pick up where they left off, and it has been discontinued and revived several more times since then.

The developers have posted on their website a graph of searches for "Popcorn Time" over the past seven years. While the app enjoyed numerous searches in the months since its launch in 2015, the graph shows a sharp drop in interest by 2016. Its popularity continued to decline, and never recovered after that, at least based on Google Trends, which confirms that The biggest contributor to his recent demise is waning interest.

While the developers have not mentioned whether law enforcement actions were a factor behind their decision to shut down the app this time around, Popcorn Time has had issues with the law in the past. The original may have been shut down after authorities intervened, and Hollywood studios have sued individual users who allegedly illegally downloaded and shared copies of the movies.