Cha-ching! That’s what COVID-19 sounds like for the online gaming sector. It’s week two of the nationwide lockdown, people are spending all their time inside their homes which means their screen time is going through the roof and the online gaming industry is witnessing accelerated growth across the globe.

This week PUBG Mobile surpassed a milestone of 600 million total downloads as it celebrates its two-year anniversary. Launched in March 2017, the company records 50 million daily active users, which excludes China.

In India, online gaming players have seen a huge spike in downloads in the past few weeks and startups are recording a surge in user engagement.

"We have seen our mobile game downloads nearly double in the past couple of weeks. Gaming records are being broken globally and we are seeing the same trend in India. People are either streaming content on platforms like Netflix or are connecting with other people, via online gaming," says Nitish Mittersain, CEO & Founder of Nazara Tech, a global interactive gaming & esports company.

Echoing that sentiment is another homegrown player Gaming Monk that on-boarded a hundred thousand new users, which accounts for 12.5 percent of its total user base, just in the past one week.

"We have not only seen a spike in the number of new users but are also witnessing new consumer trends emerge. Usually, our users would come online at night but they have started logging on during the day as well to play games," says Abhay Sharma, Co-founder of Gaming Monk.

According to the report dated on the impact of COVID-19 in India by InMobi, a leading mobile marketing and advertising platform provider, gaming app usage grew by 110 percent from January 1st to March 11th, 2020. This is great news for the currently nascent gaming industry in India, especially for mobile-based platforms. But all this increased traffic will have to be accommodated on existing platform capacity and startups like Gaming Monk claim that they are ready.

"Our technology on the backend was always scalable and we have been working with several publishers to cater to the onset of these new amateur gamers coming on the platform. We want to be able to service them with multiple games on the platform and keep them engaged", says Sharma.

With real-world sports events like the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in Japan and Indian Premier League (IPL) being postponed, sports fans are now turning to esports viewing. ‘Esports has taken off in India big time. Our investee company Nodwin gaming, that currently has a 90-95 percent of the esports gaming revenues in the Indian market, is potentially doubled of its viewership in the past few weeks.

This trend is here to stay and is only getting accelerated with this lockdown ’, says Mittersain who currently services 100 million users on the Nazara tech platform. Driving on this trend was Formula 1 which recently launched a new F1 Esports Virtual Grand Prix series featuring a number of current F1 drivers. The series was created to let fans watch the races virtually on Formula 1 YouTube, Twitch and Facebook channels, as well as F1.com.

So a growing fan base coupled with affordable esports streaming services and bandwidth is now powered by the lockdown. All these growth trends will translate to a jump in revenue for all gaming players. Speaking to CNBC-TV18 Gaming Monk claimed that the startup is now looking at a 50 percent increase in the projected revenues of FY21. While Nazara Tech that was on track to hit a 70 percent revenue growth from FY20 is now looking at a whopping 100 percent jump in revenues for the current fiscal year.

Stay home, stay safe and game on!

First Published:Apr 3, 2020 7:43 AM IST