A feast during the plague: how British game developers made money on coronavirus

The fact that you can earn money at any event has long been beyond doubt. The main thing, as they say, is to "get into the stream" and not get lost. The coronavirus epidemic, which brought so many problems to China, unexpectedly turned out to be beneficial to British game developers. Far from a new paid game for mobile devices, Plague Inc. breaks records for downloads in The Celestial Empire.

The Plague Inc. app was released on Google Play and the App Store 8 years ago. You can't call it a failure, since it is firmly entrenched in China between the 20th and 25th position in the popularity rating of paid games. But now the game is experiencing a real boom — it has topped the ranking of the most downloaded programs distributed for money.

The program is a biological strategic simulator and was first introduced by Ndemic Creations in 2012. It has become multiplatform and is available for all common operating systems and consoles. The player's task is to destroy life on our planet by creating deadly viruses and contributing to their spread.

In 2012, Plague Inc. was ranked in the top 15 most downloaded iPhone games in the United States, and in 2016 its full version for PC was released. Later, the hype around it subsided and a sharp increase in demand for a strategic simulator was noted only after the appearance in The media has disturbing news about the new coronavirus epidemic.

Screenshot from the game Plague Inc.

The growing popularity of Plague Inc. is explained by its active PR among top bloggers, who, obviously, were "interested in developers" in time. Someone makes reviews, someone draws subscribers into the discussion of the gameplay, and there are those who almost openly advertise the product.One of the popular Chinese bloggers, known for his reviews of games, wrote the following in a popular social network:

Screenshot from the game Plague Inc.

In the wake of the hype, Ndemic Creations will surely make a solid profit. Bloggers contributing to the "renaissance" of a forgotten biological simulator will not be offended either. We can only hope that the events of the game have not turned into reality, otherwise we will all have no time for entertainment.