The launch of Call of Duty Warzone Season 3 led toVirgin Media O2‘s “biggest gaming traffic spike on record”.
WarzoneSeason 3 released on Tuesday, April 26 at 5pm in the UK, resulting in Virgin Media’s busiest day of the year so far, and its second busiest of all time, on April 27.
According toVirgin Broadband, the only time its network has been busier was on December 28 last year, which it attributes to the Omicron wave of COVID-19 keeping people at home on the same day six Premier League football games were being streamed onAmazonPrime Video.
Between 4pm and midnight on April 27, the average Virgin Media customer consumed 12.1GB of data, which Virgin says is 29% more than the previous week.
During the evening peak period between 8pm and 10pm, traffic was also 11.9% higher than average and 23.8% higher than the previous week.
This isn’t the first time Virgin has identified Call of Duty as the instigator of record-breaking traffic on its service.
Last year the launch of Warzone Season 2 drove what was at the timeits “busiest day on record”, with the average Virgin user downloading 20.77GB of data over the course of 24 hours.
The launch ofXbox Series X/Sand Call of Duty updates in November 2020 alsodrove record broadband data usagefor leading UK providers.
Further reading
Warzone Season 3, which is named Classified Arms, includes a new point of interest, significant changes to several other areas of Caldera, a new Gulag and a fresh Contract, among other features.
The new point of interest is Dig Site. Featuring abandoned excavation machines and equipment, tents and massive skeletons, it’s located between Mine and Ruins.
Runway, Peak and Lagoon have also been updated ahead of the launch of Operation Monarch in May, whenGodzilla and King Kong will be unleashed on Caldera.
