Now more than halfway through the month of April, the affect left by the novel coronavirus is still apparent for most countries as governments are still urge individuals to stay indoors to prevent further spread of COVID-19. And while people are still occupied from the confines of their homes, many have went to playing video games to kill time until the issuing of social distancing has been lifted.
In response to the amount of people online in particular, this also branched the amount of people who have been streaming online as well. In a report from Quartz, roughly 2 billion hours of streaming video games has been achieved since the initial impact of the COVID-19 ailment.
According to TwitchTracker, an application recording user activity on Amazon-owned Twitch, about five million users have streamed playing games since the pandemic took place. Referencing the chart provided, active streamers were actually on a decline until the new decade. And while there was a spike in more activity leading to January, streamer population surged just around the same time the coronavirus began to make an impact on the world.
The accumulated amount of time equal to 2 billion hours streamed is equivalent to 230,000, Quartz shares. Viewership has also increased by more than two-fold: initially 1.1 million swiftly grew to 2.8 million in contrast to this time last year. The pandemic also happened to take place during the same time as Riot Games’ closed beta for Valorant, which grew to becoming one of the most viewed titles on the platform within its first 24 hours.
Not only was the team-based, first-person shooter in good timing for the circumstance, but also the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons alongside Doom Eternal which both exceeded expectations by three times the amount of sold units in comparison to their predecessors. With the amount of anticipated software that released in such a short amount of time ultimately swayed for even more watch time on the streaming platform.
Other noted impacts that have been established due to the circumstance resulted by COVID-19 is the swelling popularity of Counter Strike: Global Offensive. The game last month officially broke 1 million concurrent players and that influx in active users just recently toppled the record held by Valve’s DOTA 2. You can read the full report by heading here.
Have you been busy on Twitch since the coronavirus has taken a toll on society?
Source: Quartz
