Fallout 4 Release Wrecks Pornhub’s Traffic Numbers

While your internet provider has probably seen a slight surge in traffic since Fallout 4’s release, one company is not benefitting from your binge-gaming.

Pornhub averages 60 million daily visitors – about 6 million people at peak hours – but the game’s release date caused a massive dip in traffic. While this may at first feel like a cause of correlation not implying causation, Pornhub did indicate that many of their visitors are gamers or interested in gaming based on Google search history analytics and other web browsing habits. (Side note, everything about the internet and data is terrifying.)

According to their research, site traffic surged by about 5% in the early morning hours (presumably as the game downloaded). Starting around 5am, traffic plummeted until noon, down as much as 10% from the usual numbers. While traffic remained roughly the same for most of the work day (which is… telling, though we have yet to receive reports from corporate IT workers about what their employees’ site traffic looked like that day), around 6pm average numbers dropped again.

That night, around midnight, traffic spiked up to 15% higher than normal numbers, perhaps indicating that some players took a much needed break from Fallout.

For a more detailed analysis, check out Pornhub’s full post on the phenomenon.