Many people say the best way to enjoy watching a movie is in the theater, but not everyone has the time or money to do that, and some just don’t like leaving the comforts of their homes. The good news is that if you want to watch movies at home, no one’s going to stop you doing it. But unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the latest movies as these are almost always released in the cinema first of all.

This is the dilemma a team of developers aimed to address with Popcorn Time, a cross-platform and BitTorrent-powered movie streaming app, for the latest films. Some have likened the service to Netflix, as it is simple to use and loads of content to choose from.

“The technology behind the app is very simple. We consume a group of APIs, one for the torrents, another for the movie info, and another for the poster. We also have an API for the subtitles. Everything is automated, we don’t host anything, but take existing information and put it together,” Sebastian, one of the app developers, stated in an interview.

Though Sebastian and his team stated that Popcorn Time wouldn’t have any legal issues as the torrent files come from YTS, the developers didn’t get money for their efforts as there was no subscription fee, no ads, and the site wasn’t used for commercial gains, hence, the team announced the demise of the app.

“Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives.”

“Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in,” the Popcorn Time team posted.

But it’s not the end of the road for Popcorn Time as YTS will be taking over the project with the help of other collaborators from GitHub.

“The YTS team will now be picking up the Popcorn Time project and continuing on like previously. We are in a better position copyright wise as for us, because it’s build on our API, it’s as if we have built another interface to our website. We are no worse off managing the project than we would be just supplying the movies,” the dev explains.

YTS clarified that it it does not own the ‘new’ Popcorn Time as it is a community driven project.