Plague Inc. is fun, but it’s not an accurate model for the China coronavirus outbreak

Plague Inc. developer Ndemic said the game isn’t a scientific model and makes the eradication of a virus seem too easy

Reading Time:3 minutes

Many players consider China a great place to start an epidemic in Plague Inc. (Picture: Ndemic)

Published: 11:12pm, 28 Jan 2020Updated: 4:14pm, 16 Feb 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

British strategy game Plague Inc. is getting a renewed bout of attention as countries grapple with a deadly new coronavirus that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. But both epidemiologists and the game’s developer say that the scenario portrayed in Plague Inc. is unlikely in the real world.

In Plague Inc., a player has to craft the perfect virus to infect and kill everyone on the planet. After the outbreak of a very real virus in China in December, the game’s popularity soared in the country. Not only did the 8-year-old title become the most downloaded paid game on China’s iOS App Store last week, the PC version reached an all-time peak in concurrent players on Steam.

But the game’s enormous following has also raised concerns. While game developer Ndemic put out a statement stressing that the game is “not a scientific model,” epidemiologists have also pointed out that the spread of a virus in the real world is more complicated than it appears in Plague Inc.

A big reason for this is that game developers simply can’t take all factors into account, according to Kelvin Kam-fai Tsoi, an epidemiologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“There are a lot of scenarios which are simply unimaginable,” Tsoi said. “For example, we don’t know how long the outbreak had laid dormant in Wuhan. Something like that could exponentially raise the infection percentage.”

He added, “Then we have the Spring Festival, during which people are travelling with the virus on them. Factors like this are not included in the game.”