House of the Dragon comes with problems for HBO Max subscribers: what’s next in the Game of Thrones sequel

The long-awaited Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon has premiered on HBO Max.

As the first episode was released online, some users reported that the app was crashing, prompting them to seek help.

It’s not known how widespread the problem was, as other users tweeted that the episode was available about three minutes before 9pm. However, the @HBOMaxHelp Twitter account was experiencing a lot of traffic as subscribers tried to stream House of Dragon.

One user, in particular, said he was getting a “title not available” error message, which customer service said they “would love to help understand”. Another user didn’t seem amused that the app “would crash”, and HBOMaxHelp advised to “try closing the app and restarting to see if that helps”.

Technical difficulties

The HBO Max support team later acknowledged the problems with the site crashing and responded to a user saying: “We are aware that some users may be experiencing problems at this time. Please try closing the app and restarting to see if this helps. Please come back immediately if you are still experiencing problems.”

“House of the Dragon is being successfully watched by millions of HBO Max subscribers tonight. We are aware that a small portion of users trying to connect via Fire TV devices are experiencing issues, but these are being resolved for those affected users,” HBO Max representatives told Deadline.

House of the Dragon is based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, the series, set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, tells the story of House Targaryen.

The show stars Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno and Rhys Ifans.

The cast of the series also includes Milly Alcock, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Emily Carey, Harry Collett, Ryan Corr, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jefferson Hall, David Horovitch, Wil Johnson, John Macmillan, Graham McTavish, Ewan Mitchell, Theo Nate, Matthew Needham, Bill Paterson, Phia Saban, Gavin Spokes, Savannah Steyn.