Matter of life, death and divorce

For some, ‘game over’ led to the end of relationships and sadly, even lives

PETALING JAYA: It may be just gaming to some, but in many cases, it’s a much bigger thing. Gaming has led to divorce, death and fights.

Just days ago, a 32-year-old man in Kuala Lumpur turned on his wife of seven years – because she wanted him to stop gaming.

The problem started two years ago when he started to play the popular multiplayer online game known as King of Glory or Arena of Valor.

At first, his wife, a 32-year-old Chinese national, accepted his habit and even played with him to keep him company.

Then, he found new friends and would play with them until the wee hours of the morning.

She tried to get him to stop playing so that he could spend time with her and his young daughter but he would not leave his games.

One night, when he was sleeping, she used her husband’s phone and logged into his gaming account to sell off all his gaming achievements, which is equivalent to “restarting” the game for him.

When he found out, he was furious and got her down to the living room.

In front of his parents, he scolded her and ordered her to leave the house. He even told her he would divorce her.

There have been worse cases, some involving deaths.

In southern Russia, a 17-year-old who had broken his leg and was bored at home saw his character die on screen before he himself passed away at home.

The teen, known only as Rustam, was playing the game Defence of the Ancients almost continuously for 22 days, stopping only to sleep and eat.

Two Taiwanese men also died from marathon gaming binges within three weeks of one another in 2015.

The first was a 38-year-old man who was found dead after playing video games for five days straight in an Internet cafe in Taipei.

The second was Hsieh, a 32-yearold man who died from cardiac arrest after playing for three days without stopping.

Even worse, workers at the Kaohsiung Internet cafe did not know that Hsieh was dead for hours.

He had been known to sleep face down on the table during his gaming binges, but when workers found him sprawled out and unresponsive, they finally sent him to hospital.

Authorities believe that cold temperatures and over-exhaustion were to blame for his death.

They noted that none of the other gamers in the cafe seemed to even notice that one of their own had died and was being carted off by paramedics. They were too engrossed in their own games.