The coronavirus paralyzes public life in China. The Chinese are now spending their evenings more often with video games. The viewer numbers in the streams are exploding. Honor of Kings, PUBG and League of Legends particularly benefit from the boredom of the Chinese who are seeking distraction.
How widespread is the coronavirus by now? The coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, China. It has now infected over 59,000 people worldwide and killed over 1,300, most of them in China.
This has led to parts of China being sealed off. Public life is paralyzed in some cities, many Chinese are under quarantine or prefer to spend their free time in virtual worlds instead of the real one.
This adds up: In China, the “Lunar New Year” is the most important holiday. Just as we in the West celebrate Christmas over several days, the Lunar New Year is celebrated in China this year from January 24 to January 30. As reported by Niko Partners, many holidays have been extended by a week due to the coronavirus.
Usually, the Chinese New Year is the time when the Chinese play more video games than usual. In 2020, this has intensified due to the coronavirus.
The Chinese are looking for light entertainment
This is what it does to the Chinese: CNN reports on a 25-year-old secretary who actually works in Beijing but was stuck in her hometown Taiyuan during the holidays. To pass the time, she only took her phone and not her computer.
Due to the suddenly extended holiday period and because she herself was under a 14-day quarantine, she unexpectedly had more free time than planned:
Every day I sit at home. I am so bored. I don’t want to switch on my brain, so I play some simple and fun games.
A 25-year-old Chinese woman
The 25-year-old is crazy about “Peacekeeper Elite”, the PUBG Mobile, which Tencent has somehow turned into a peace theme to avoid stressing the government.
CNN cites other Chinese who want to distract themselves with light mobile games and think of something else to avoid constantly confronting the coronavirus.
Gaming and streaming are booming in China
These are the effects on gaming: As reported by Nikko Partners, the mobile game “Honor of Kings”, a sort of LoL Mobile, broke its absolute player record in the week of January 30. Nikko Partners attributes this increase to the coronavirus. People stayed at home instead of going out.
In China, downloads in the app store increased by 27.5% compared to the previous year and revenue increased by 12.1%.
The increased interest in gaming can be seen on the streaming platform Douyu, something like China’s Twitch:
- In 2019, the most successful game there was PUBG with 31.7 million viewer hours during the holidays
- In 2020, the most successful game is Honor of Kings with 62.8 million viewer hours. The interest in PUBG and LoL has also risen dramatically.
Overall, the viewing hours for almost every top game in China have roughly doubled.
Could Steam also boom because of the virus?
This is noteworthy: In recent days, Steam reported new record numbers of concurrent users, even though no major new game has been released: 18.8 million users were active at the same time.
It could well be that the virus plays a role here as well.
The coronavirus has further impacts on gaming:
- A PUBG tournament in Berlin has been cancelled
- the LoL tournaments in China and other parts of Asia have also been restricted
- the release of PS5 and Xbox Series X could be in jeopardy
An interesting way to deal with the coronavirus has been found by a Chinese studio:
