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Houseparty App sees nearly 3000% increase in downloads following coronavirus lockdown

16 million downloads for the month of March

Houseparty App sees nearly 3000% increase in downloads following coronavirus lockdown

Epic Games' Houseparty app has seen its downloads skyrocket by 2902 per cent month-on-month.

Data provided by mobile app marketing firm Sensor Tower confirmed the huge rise in numbers across both the App Store and Google Play, citing the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent regional lockdowns as a direct factor.

In March, the social networking app was installed an estimated 17.2 million times. For comparison, Houseparty was downloaded 533,000 times in February and 570,000 in January.

When it comes to revenue, Houseparty jumped from $17,000 in February to $155,000 in March, representing an enormous leap of 912 per cent in user spending. 

Epic acquired Houseparty in June 2019 for an undisclosed fee. Following this, the game was installed an average of approximately 650,000 times a month from June to May that year.

Europe growth

In the UK, downloads across iOS and Android grew 1120 per cent during the four-week period of March 1st to 28th compared to the previous four weeks, according to App Annie. This represented an increase of about 12 times, proving its popularity within the country.  

Other European countries have followed suit, with Italy's weekly downloads during March 15th to 21st jumping by 423 times the level of average weekly downloads in Q4 2019 and Spain installs likewise rising by 2360 times.

Epic Games recently offered a $1 million bounty for anyone that can provide evidence that its Houseparty app has been hit by a "smear campaign" after rumours that the game allowed user's details to be hacked.

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Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.