Watching pirated movies on your iPhone just got a little more difficult. After climbing the charts of Apple’s App Store, the trendy app Kimi, with its collection of fake movies, has just disappeared. Pretending to be a spot-the-difference game for testing vision, the widely downloaded app ranked above Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video in Apple’s free entertainment apps rankings this week before it was removed.
Without having to make any payment or log into any account, iPhone owners were previously able to use Kimi to browse a wide selection of fakes for popular movies and TV shows. Many of the films in the Best Picture category at this year’s Oscars were Kimi, at varying levels of quality.
Poor people included is a grainy, pixelated, but high-quality version Killers of the Flower Moon it was on Kimi for the stream, although an intrusive ad for online casinos was displayed on top. It’s definitely not the viewing experience Martin Scorsese envisioned for audiences. Not only limited to movies, viewers could also access episodes of currently airing TV shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Racethrough the Kimi application.
Who is behind this pirated app? It remains a mystery. The developer was listed as “Marcus Evans” in the app store before Kimi was removed, and this was the only app listed under that name, possibly a pseudonym. WIRED was unable to reach Evans or anyone involved with the Kimi app prior to publication.
Apple is known for being meticulous about protecting its “walled garden” of safe-to-download apps, so it’s surprising to see a pirated streaming option like Kimi climb so high in the charts before being kicked out. Kimi has received more than 100 user reviews in the App Store, many of which openly mention the free movies hidden within the app, and has a user rating of four stars. An Apple representative did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
However, this is not the first pirated app to garner a ton of downloads on the App Store. In 2015, WIRED spoke with the developers behind Popcorn Time, a similar app. Security reporter Andy Greenberg wrote: “With Popcorn Time, the complexity of BitTorrent search engines, trackers, clients, seeds, decompression, playback, and storage is reduced to a single click.” It’s unconfirmed how Kimi provided the streams, but the process of watching bootlegs is definitely simplified for users—just download the smartphone app and press Play.
The saga of the Kimi app is a symbol of the new revival of Internet piracy. A serious challenge for rights holders and film and TV studios, piracy is on the rise again. As streaming services crack shared passwords and cash-strapped users look for cheaper entertainment options, the black market for bootlegs is likely to continue to flourish.