If you’re gaming on a capped internet plan — where you have a monthly download limit — you might be interested to know just how much data your favourite games might be chewing through, from the lean (League of Legends) to the obscene (Destiny 2).
Via Kotaku Australia, telecommunications site whistleout have measured the approximate hourly download figures (exact figures obviously vary depending on a number of factors) for 22 of the most popular online games of 2020, a list that includes everything I’ve mentioned so far in the headline and intro, along with stuff like Sea of Thieves, Overwatch, Minecraft, Call of Duty and Rocket League.
I’m not going to list all 22 here (you can go there to see the full figures), but I will note that Destiny 2 tops the list at approximately 300MB per hour, meaning you could easily be getting through gigabytes of data per week, just on that game (at least if you regularly play in large parties, as smaller sessions, and lower framerates, consume less data).
Coming in second is Counter-Strike Global Offensive, at approximately 250MB per hour (which, again, can be lower if you’ve got less players). In third place is Overwatch at around 135MB per hour, with DOTA 2 (120MB) and Warframe (115MB) not far behind.
At the smaller end of the scale, the game using the least amount of data is Hearthstone, at just 3MB, with Final Fantasy XIV next at 20MB and Sea of Thieves at 30MB.
While it’s a general rule that online shooters are the most data-hungry, since they’re updating the position of each player so regularly, it’s interesting that PUBG (40MB) uses less than half the data Fortnite does (100MB).
You can see the full list here.
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