Stuck at Home? You Know What to Do!
In 2020, I don’t think it comes as any surprise that people are turning to their internet when stuck at home. But Italian gamers have shown that online gaming is truly an incredibly popular hobby as they push the country’s internet to its limits.
Many of Italy’s public buildings are shutting down as they wait out the outbreak. This includes a great number of businesses and, quite importantly, all schools. Many classes and work have turned to online to continue conducting their practices via the use of chatting programs and conference calls. What surprised the internet providers is that it wasn’t those communications systems that were overloading the internet, it was online gaming.
Telecom Italia Chief Executive Officer has said “We reported an increase of more than 70% of Internet traffic over our landline network, with a big contribution from online gaming such as Fortnite.”
Apparently, the issues were made worse due to Fortnite released a patch with the size of 25 gigabytes at the start of the quarantine. With so many Italian Gamers returning to it with nothing to do, the amount of downloading taking place all at once was just a bit too much for the provider to handle.
As many of you probably know, the bandwidth cost of actually playing an online game is pretty low. So it seems like it was just an unfortunate timing with the patch going live on the same day as the shutdown. Indeed, Telecom Italia has stated, “Telecom Italia’s network is working perfectly and with higher volumes compared with previous days.”
I always find these types of news interesting because it teaches us new things to think about in the future. Of course, in situations like this, the internet providers should be ready for a large flood of activity. But how about the game devs? Should they hold off on major updates during outbreaks for the same reason?
Source: Bloomberg