Gaming Becomes Top Activity Online During Coronavirus Lockdown
With so many people staying indoors due to Coronavirus, gaming has become the number one way to pass time.
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As people start locking themselves in their homes and isolate themselves from what is happening outside, keeping themselves occupied all day is becoming an ordeal.
More and more people are looking to find an escape from the reality that has dawned on us. An alternate universe is what many are craving for, and that solace is being found in gaming.
Gaming companies worldwide are seeing an upsurge as people are turning towards the virtual world to keep themselves busy.
Huge Spike in Number of Gamers
According to figures by Pokkt, a global leader in mobile video advertising, there has been a 39 percent increase in global game downloads, with figures now crossing the 4 billion mark in February 2020.
In Asia alone, there has been a 46 percent growth in mobile game downloads in February.
Mobile gaming has shown huge potential in the Indian market, and the recent pandemic has only boosted these numbers.
In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, American Telco Verizon’s CEO Hans Vestber mentioned that Verizon witnessed a 75 percent week-on-week rise in gaming traffic on the network.
Talking to Bloomberg Italy, Telecom Italia also reported a massive surge in bandwidth usage in the country, attributing it to Battle Royale (BR) games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.
At a time when the majority of people are stuck to their computers all day, it should come as no surprise that popular game distribution service Steam recorded over 20 million users playing simultaneously, the highest number it has ever recorded. The rise can definitely be attributed to people staying at home as Steam did not have any new game being released.
Activision’s new BR Call of Duty: Warzone which was released about two weeks ago for the PlayStation already had racked up more than 30 million players, the company announced on Friday.
Servers Collapsing Under High Demand
Not every gaming service has been having a great time. Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Nintendo Online have both been on the receiving end of outages as servers struggle to keep up with the increasing demand.
Xbox Live suffered an outage on March 15 for a couple of hours whereas Nintendo Online was down for almost nine hours, preventing users from playing the ever-popular Mario Kart and accessing other services on the platform.
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