Do Online Games Take the Biggest Bite from Your Data Bucket?

While playing new games on your PC or even your smartphone, you might have realized they run on resolutions which are similar to the resolutions to what you expect on YouTube.

HD content is common, and while that works great when it comes to the gaming experience, here is the thing – even the highest data consuming games don’t come near SD or HD video streaming when it comes to data consumption.

You could play online casino games for hours and yet not reach the 1 GB data usage mark. Compare that with 720p videos for half an hour, and you can see the difference.

Comparing Data Usage Between Videos and Games

Any data streaming service like Netflix consumes 1GB per hour easily whereas the games like Destiny 2 or Counter Strike global offensive, in spite of being cursed for using a lot of data end up around 300MB per hour.

The new popular game PUBG consumes only 35 and 50 MB an hour. A four min 720p YouTube video is more than 50MB and double that figure, if you want to go in for 1080p.

Now, that’s where we are talking about the SD content. With most of the Televisions boasting HD and 4K definition resolution in their specs, users prefer to watch movies and TV series on resolutions better than the Standard definition. The data consumed almost around 3 and 4 GB per hour for the HD and an unimaginable 10 GB per hour on 4K.

Why Does Online Games Take So Much Less Data?

Online multiplayer games don’t exchange video graphics or sound effects, exactly opposite of what we expect. Rather, online gaming works by an exchange of preset commands which result in stimulation of video graphic or some sound which is preloaded on the computer of the other player.

The only place where they do exchange Audio or video is when players use headphones or webcams to communicate with each other during the game. The Voice over Internet Protocol same as provided by Skype uses somewhat between 20-30 Mb an hour.

Another place where gamers consume data is by downloading games, we rarely see someone getting a physical disc from the store these days. And moreover multiplayer games from famous gaming platforms like Steam requires updates every second week.

The one-time installer package being as big as 50 Gbs is not rarity. Additionally, the patches and updates also vary from 1 and 2 GB for the regular one and can go up to an enormous amount of 40 as with the racing title FORZA 7 for major updates.

The Other Factors

Playing games can be rewarding and you wouldn’t have to worry about being connected to the WiFi all the time.

However, do note that data consumption also varies with the number of people on the server, usual to peer sharing games consume more data. So it is not the online gaming which consumes more data but the game itself.

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