Unity recently released a report that analysed how the pandemic affected player numbers, and it suggests that the average gaming volume per day from 2019 to 2020 has narrowed between weekdays and weekends. The differences between weekday and weekend gaming in 2019 was 1.39% in the weekends favour, and yet in 2020 this shrank to just 0.91%, which in turn resulted in a 52.7% increase in splitting weekend gaming time to the weekdays.
Usually, this distribution narrows in the summer months as school holidays and vacations are in full swing, but in 2020 as lockdowns and socially-limiting policies were in effect, this narrowed distribution became even closer all year around.
For a short period in May 2020, weekday gaming even became drastically more popular to weekend gaming, although the biggest difference came over the summer period when weekday/weekend gaming sat around 0.7% difference in variation.
"It's still too early to tell if changed habits will become the new norm once the pandemic is over," said Ingrid Lestiyo, Senior VP and General Manager, Operate Solutions, Unity in the report. "But given our understanding of past player behavior changes, it would be surprising to see many players revert."
Right now, we have no information as to how the start of 2021 differentiated to the start of 2020, but if these statistics are anything to go by, a similar looking result can probably be expected.