The folks over at Ndemic Creations, the developer behind the cult hit pandemic simulation Plague Inc., want everyone to know that their game is not scientific model after sales began to skyrocket after a current disease outbreak scare in China and East Asia.
“Plague Inc. has been out for eight years now and whenever there is an outbreak of disease we see an increase in players, as people seek to find out more about how diseases spread and to understand the complexities of viral outbreaks,” said a spokesperson for Ndemic.
According to a report from Quartz, sales began to spike in Apple’s App store on Jan. 20 after the government of China revealed that the country had locked down three cities to help contain the outbreak of what is named Wuhan novel coronavirus – a SARS-like virus that involves pneumonia.
Since that time, the outbreak has continued to spread with over 1,300 infections, a multitude of deaths, and several different countries with confirmed infections.
According to statistics from analytics firm AppAnnie, Plague Inc. is now the most-downloaded premium game on iOS in China. It has also risen to the top of the charts in other nations including the UK and US.
It is expected that this is because players in China are using the game to help cope with the outbreak and its potential effects on their society. Others speculate that players are looking to the game to better understand epidemic spread and to better understand what might happen.
“We specifically designed the game to be realistic and informative, while not sensationalizing serious real-world issues,” the spokesperson for Ndemic said. “This has been recognized by the CDC and other leading medical organizations around the world.”
Plague Inc. launched on mobile in 2012 and has since seen further iterations such as a release on Steam with Plague Inc: Evolved. In 2016. In the games, players act as the disease and work to infect the entire world before the world is able to overcome the pathogen and produce a cure.
It’s easy to see how this sort of gameplay, and the simulation underlying it, would become interesting to the world community in the wake of a potential pandemic.
“However, please remember that Plague Inc. is a game,” Ndemic said, “not a scientific model and that the current coronavirus outbreak is a very real situation which is impacting a huge number of people. We would always recommend that players get their information directly from local and global health authorities.”
Meanwhile, there have been no reports on if Greenland or Madagascar have closed their ports. (As any Plague Inc. player will tell you, this is a common problem for any burgeoning pathogen attempting to take over the world.)
If you’re playing Plague Inc. or not to help reduce stress about the current situation, we urge you to stick to trusted health sources such as the World Health Organization instead of video games.
Image: Pixabay
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