of esports tournaments throughout China, and slowed down manufacturing of video game consoles, stay-at-home activities are more popular than ever. Total game downloads on Apple's app store in China increased 27.5% year over year and revenue rose by 12.1%, according to market research firm Sensor Tower.

During the Lunar New Year, Yang said he traveled back to his hometown in Kaifeng, Henan and played games with other relatives and friends. He has since returned to Guangdong province where he spends most of the day indoors with his family.

"The evenings are empty, and I have free time. So at night, I'll play 'Peacekeeper Elite' with friends," said Yang, "We'll set a time to log on and play together."

On China's popular streaming platform, Douyu, games like "Honor of Kings," "Playerunknown's Battlegrounds"and "League of Legends" are twice as popular as they were during the Lunar New Year in 2019, according to the platform's streaming index. "Honor of Kings," the top game on Douyu during the holiday this year, pulled in 63 million views, compared to the 31.7 million views that "PUBG" had during 2019's holiday week.

Douyu's headquarters is located in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, and the company's stock price dipped in late January when it announced it might have trouble with staff returning to work, Niko reported . Douyu and PUBG Mobile did not respond to comment.

Tencent, Netease, Activision Blizzard and Alibaba, all major game publishers with popular games in China, declined to comment.

Video game companies have also responded to the coronavirus outbreak by extending or introducing