Popcorn Time shuts down

This week has descended into an incredible mess for Popcorn Time, and the end is still not in sight.

Over the weekend, the Popcorntime.io website – the internet shop front for the most popular of a series of Torrent-streaming apps – has been shut down, reports Torrent Freak, after a torturous week for its development team. Other developers may attempt to resurrect the streaming service in one way or another, but for now, Popcorn Time looks down for the count.

Just a few days ago, the hubbub started because of an internal dispute in the Popcorn Time team.

It began on Monday when news broke that several of the core developers had chose to leave the PopcornTime.io project, fearing a possible lawsuit.

When the person in charge of the domain name left, the.io domain ceased to work. But Gandi.net, the domain’s service provider, withdrew the changes.

Clones of the service still exist, but this marks the elimination of the official – and most popular – successor to the original Popcorn Time. This week, visitors to the Popcorn Time site might have gotten an error message. Developers described Butter as “stripped down of the parts that made people wary”, according to the Verge. Then 24 hours later, new developers picked up the project and brought the service straight back to life. Project Butter is essentially Popcorn Time minus the direct links to pirated TV shows and movies. But there are other problems afoot: popular Popcorn Time library YTS (formerly known as YIFY) has experienced global outages, and variants are still being targeted by regulatory groups like the MPAA.

Butter isn’t in the clear either, as it is also experiencing a website shutdown.