The Steam player count numbers for the classic outbreak simulator Plague Inc: Evolved seem to be in an odd state of flux right now, following the recent spike in reported Nipah virus cases.
Do you remember, all the way back in the time void that was 2020, when Steam player count numbers for Plague Inc: Evolved suddenly spiked during the height of COVID-19?
It is, thankfully, a bit of a distant memory now, but the game suddenly shot up the Steam charts and amassed a concurrent all-time player count of roughly 17,889 in January 2020.
Even now, based on the top posts of this month on the r/plagueinc subreddit, COVID-19 appears to be the most popular name for an in-game virus.
It was a silly little funny story during a legitimately terrifying time, which really is just par for the course where the internet is concerned.
Unfortunately, the player numbers for Plague Inc: Evolved seem to be in flux once again, and this time it may be due to the recently reported rise in Nipah virus cases.
Now, admittedly, topics like this aren’t my area of expertise, so I’m not going to insult your intelligence and cosplay as a current affairs journalist.
The short of it is that five cases of Nipah virus, a deadly zoonotic virus with a high mortality rate, have been reported in India.
The World Health Organization describes Nipah in its top ten priority diseases, alongside Covid-19 and Zika, because of its potential to trigger an epidemic. This has prompted “COVID-style health checks” to be carried out in airports across Asia.
According to The Telegraph, the first reported patients were admitted to intensive care on 4 January after their conditions worsened. So, while the airport screenings are new, the reported cases in India appeared towards the first half of January.
That might explain why the SteamDB numbers for Plague Inc: Evolved briefly spiked on January 11. Maybe the internet latched onto the story quicker than news outlets did.
That being said, the SteamDB numbers have now returned to the regular 24-hour player count average.
However, there’s a solid chance that, considering that the Nipah virus seems to be the story of the day on most major news sites, we’ll see another spike in the next 24 hours.
Here’s hoping that this is all just a big old nothingburger and those Plague Inc: Evolved numbers stay down in the three-figure mark until the end of time.
I’m sure the devs are lovely people, but their game becoming popular again thanks to a global pandemic isn’t something I want to check off my 2026 bingo card.
