The creator of The Plague Inc felt uncomfortable making money from the pandemic

When fantasy becomes reality.

the game Plague Company The game is celebrating ten years and since its launch in 2012, the game has had 180 million players as it peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an interview day reddit Game creator James Vaughan talks about the game and its relationship to disease and epidemic.

“Interestingly, Plague Inc has always been more popular when people get sick, like when Plague Inc was first in Japan — we saw big spikes every time there was a bad flu outbreak. When Ebola was out in 2015 , we saw a huge spread across the world a rise in the number of players. When Covid first started even though we saw the largest increase in players ever – it lasted for about a month and then came back to normal levels.”

Vaughan continues and explains that he felt very uncomfortable with how popular the game was during the pandemic.

“Moderately awkward situation! I felt very uncomfortable seeing all the fictional stuff I put into the game playing in real life. I want my games to perform well because they are good games – not because of a serious global catastrophe,”

This also led to Vaughan’s contact with the World Health Organization, CEPI and game development Plague Company: The Cure To help people understand viruses and the intricacies of stopping an epidemic.