1 July 2020

The corona lockdown has changed our gaming patterns

DISTRACT researchers have recently published a new study of how our gaming patterns changed during the worldwide corona lockdown.

Figure 1: Number of daily concurrent users on Steam (red line) and In-Game (orange line).

When the corona epidemic became global in mid-March and countries locked down one by one, users across the world logged into the videogame platform Steam to play. The USA has had a 75% increase in gaming, while Italy has seen a 70% increase in internet usage, mainly attributed to games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty. Steam, a popular gaming platform used world-wide, has beaten records with more than 20 million users online at the same time.

The study recounts that the number of concurrent users on Steam increased by approx. 30% during the lockdown period.

Anna Sapienza, postdoc at DISTRACT and SODAS and principal researcher of the study, sees the increase in gaming as an expression of this form of entertainment being both including, engaging, and social.

“If Zoom can be compared to going to a café with friends, gaming can be compared to meeting one another over a social activity. Several people have told me that they began to game again to chat with friends.”

Figure 2: The percentual increase in concurrent active users during the lockdown period compared to the period before lockdown.

The study about online gaming during the corona lockdown is the fourth post in a series of research blogs about the corona pandemic.

Behind the blog seriesis a group of researchers affiliated with the interdisciplinary Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS).

The following people from the DISTRACT project have contributed to this post:

  • Anna Sapienza, Postdoc at SODAS and DISTRACT.
  • Malene H. Jespersen, Master Student at IT & Cognition, Student Assistant at SODAS
  • Kristoffer Albris, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology and SODAS
  • Morten Axel Pedersen, Professor at the Department of Anthropology and SODAS
  • Sune Lehmann, Professor at Computer Science, DTU, and member of the SODAS steering committee.