November is a noteworthy month for a plethora of different reasons, in topics ranging from video games, to politics, and COVID-19 news. The ongoing pandemic has wreaked havoc on a number of industries over the past year, causing delays to many major video game, movie, and television releases.
However, news is now surfacing that the pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer and German partner BioTech have created a vaccine for COVID-19 that is proving 90 percent effective. As a result, stock shares in video game companies across the market have started to drop rapidly.
The ongoing pandemic has caused an absurdly high amount of damage over the nine or so months that it has affected the globe. Not just in terms of public health, but also when looking into national economy. The pandemic has basically crippled the film and movie industry, with major releases like Tenet performing poorly in theaters despite Christopher Nolan’s pedigree attached to it. In a similar vein, the pandemic has caused damage to the video game industry in a number of ways, which is now taking the form of falling stock shares.
The news comes by way of stock market analysis and service provider Briefing.com’s official Twitter account. Yesterday, the account tweeted out that video game software and company’s stocks were dropping following the announcement of the COVID-19 trial vaccine’s success. The companies mentioned in the tweet include Nintendo, Ubisoft, Activision, and Take-Two Interactive. Ironically, some gaming stock shares, including Activision Blizzard’s, surged amidst the pandemic in the later days of July.
Now it seems like quite the opposite is taking place. According to Briefing.com’s tweet, each company’s stock share fell from around nine to six percent. However, it does make sense that video game stocks would fall with the news of a COVID-19 vaccine. When people think of a vaccine, they tend to immediately think of it as a cure to the ongoing pandemic. If people are no longer going to be at risk of getting COVID-19, which is not necessarily the case with a successful vaccine, then more people will be spending less time indoors and playing video games.
In all likelihood, these dips in stocks will only be a temporary fall as this seems like a case of the market naturally reacting to the news of a successful vaccine. Unfortunately, the damage that COVID-19 has had on not only the video game industry, but the entire world, will take quite a long time to heal from. Countless companies have been severely affected by the pandemic, as well. For example, Sega laid off 650 people and cut bonuses from the remaining staff due to the pandemic. With any luck, this potential COVID-19 vaccine is truly effective and rolled out to as many people around the world as possible.