People spent 75 PERCENT more time playing video games than usual during the coronavirus pandemic

The amount of internet usage dedicated to playing video games in the US rose by 75 percent during the first week of the countrywide COVID-19 shutdown. The figure comes from a Verizon report on how internet usage has been affected by the entire country being asked to stay indoors for potentially months on end. While other forms of online entertainment saw boosts over the same period--video streaming rose 12 percent, and general web traffic rose by 20 percent--nothing came close to video games. Several other game-centric businesses saw similar bumps over the same period. The PC gaming platform Steam saw more than 20 million people playing games through the service at the same time, an all-time high.