Rick and Morty fans were not happy about a live stream “surprise” from AdultSwim.com. Not only did the channel decide to only make the episode available on streaming for paying viewers, but they waited until the last minute to let fans know. And then they also put a stream on during the show that seemed to mock the fans who wanted to see it. (Watch the fake live stream in Heavy’s story here.)

It was not a happy night for fans.

For the first three episodes of Season 3, AdultSwim.com also streamed the episode for free, even for fans who didn’t have a cable subscription. There were glitches though. Last week, for example, only half of the episode was livestreamed, although Adult Swim did put up the entire episode later for streaming.

But this week, they decided to just not stream the episode at all. A lot of viewers, however, weren’t expecting that and they were caught by surprise when they checked in and found the episode wasn’t playing.

Well, something was playing. But not Rick and Morty. Instead, viewers were “treated” to people with props doing a live-action fake version of the new episode while holding the script. But they never actually told people during the stream or in the comments where to go to actually watch the episode. In fact, some viewers said that when they said something in the comments, they were called “freeloaders.”

Adult swim's live stream is doing a live-action one star production of today's episode and they're calling it poor people rick and morty pic.twitter.com/szBYzxQ5mu — mr. fox ? (@Brendogfox) August 14, 2017

A different stream was available for paying customers, but even that one didn’t work right. It was supposed to be streamed at least for people who were logged in through their service provider. But the only way to see it, it seems, was using the Adult Swim app.

A lot of fans are so angry about what happened that now they don’t want to watch any more episodes at all.

It was funny at first, but this live stream acting of Rick & Morty is getting old. Anyone else mad? #RickAndMorty — Questions for Scienc (@realQFS) August 14, 2017

Damn adult swim trolled me pretty hard. If youre looking for rick and morty live stream use planet cartoon on fb — Bjorn Ironside (@Davebr0chill) August 14, 2017

They say it’s not really about the fact that it wasn’t free, but that AdultSwim.com didn’t clearly explain what was going on during the live stream. Instead, they just left fans hanging, thinking the episode would start at any time.

And now there’s a big divide. Some viewers are looking for pirated versions of the episode and versions posted on YouTube (which are quickly taken down.) Others are saying that everyone should be grateful for the free episodes they did get, and buy the show from now on in order to support the show’s creators and get more seasons.

What did you think about AdultSwim.com’s decision? Let us know in the comments below.