That didn’t take long – after Popcorn Time was revived in the form of a web app accessible through a regular browser, users were happy to get their old content back once again – but now, the app has run into a problem as the large volumes of traffic generated by it drove it into some conflicts with a free trial service that it was based on.
Popcorn Time used a remote torrent service called Coinado.io, which offered a free trial which is exactly what Popcorn Time was using. The service allowed them to stream YIFY torrents directly to an HTML5 video component, and this is how the whole app was structured – but after its popularity went viral, the free trial for their access to Coinado was canceled and the app itself ended up shutting down.
Users have been predicting that it won’t be long before the site is back online with another service running in the backend, but this time they will hopefully manage their traffic more efficiently. The problem was seemingly caused by the large amounts of traffic headed down Coinado’s way, so if Popcorn Time’s developers plan on using any third-party APIs and systems for the next version of the website, they should probably talk with the administrators first.
Or try to work out some solution that minimizes the load on each individual service provider – they will eventually need to do that anyway, if they want to be able to handle large volumes of traffic easily. The popularity of the service means that this is exactly what they will have to deal with in the future if they want to keep it alive, as many people are actively interested in Popcorn Time and are always following its progress, looking out for the next version.
Currently, other than a brief message posted on the website to explain the situation, we don’t know what the status of the Web app is. It seems to be dead for all intents and purposes, at least until the developers manage to figure out a solution for the streaming service. They might set up their own as well, but judging by the fact that they were using a free trial for Coinado, they might not want to invest too much into Popcorn Time right now.
And for a service that doesn’t generate any profits, they would be smart to approach it like that anyway. There have been rumors that they plan to eventually monetize it, but we have no idea if those are true, nor when that’s happening if that’s the case.