Fortnite traffic collapses broadband in Italy due to confinement by the coronavirus

Crowds of young Italians confined to their homes are saturating the servers of the famous video game.

The closure of Italian schools and institutes as a measure of containment of the Coronavirus is becoming visible in many areas of the country’s social life, one of them being video games and specifically, Fortnite, which has seen its traffic radically boosted in recent days. From Telecom Italia, they have recognized that the increase in Internet use has increased to two-thirds:

“We report an increase of more than 70% in Internet traffic through our fixed network, with a great contribution from online games like Fortnite.” This was expressed last Wednesday by the executive director of Telecom Italia, Luigi Gubitosi. The businessman has also referred to Call of Duty as another of the services that broadband is taking over.

If Fortnite, after a few years of rising and falling players accompanied by different video game updates, still continued to have considerable traffic, you are now seeing how Italy is taking over its servers in an avalanche. Not only the closure of academic institutions has led to this growth, but also the closure of all leisure centres in the country.

At one point, the connection was even lost in many homes due to server saturation. An incident that has been resolved in a short time. From the United Kingdom, they are already preparing to increase the capacity to withstand more traffic in anticipation of what may come and perhaps we will see this dynamic in Spain in the coming days.

Added to the players are the streamers as they have recognized from the operator Telia Carrier from Sweden: “They are requesting a lot of bandwidth to share their games, about five times more than usual. If they can’t move or go out, they are going to need additional Internet power. ”

We recall that numerous video game events, such as E3 or BitSummit, are being cancelled as containment to the expansion of the virus. Launch delays are also beginning to arise, and some companies, such as Nintendo, are on the brink of stock shortages in stores.