1 - Virginia Beach Father Dies After 24-Hour Video Game Marathon For Charity
Gamer Brian Vigneault died after playing an online game called War of Tanks for nearly 24 hours. Vigneault was raising money for the Make-A-Wish foundation during his marathon. When he stopped to take a smoke break, he had a massive heart attack and died.
According to a friend, Vigneault had not slept for 22 hours and was drinking Five-Hour Energy and Red Bull to stay awake.
2 - Three-Day Gaming Binge Kills Taiwanese Man
Two Taiwanese men 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-year-old man who died from cardiac arrest after playing for three days without stopping.
Even worse, workers at the Kaohsiung Internet cafe didn't discover that Hsieh was dead for hours. He'd 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 the hospital. Authorities believe that cold temps and over-exhaustion were to blame. They noted that none of the other games in the cafe seemed to even notice that one of their own was being carted off, stiff as a board, by paramedics.
If there's a lesson to be learned (besides "don't play video games for days without stopping to sleep or eat"), it's this: don't get caught in an emergency around gamers. Unless your dying body impedes their ability to play, they might not be any help at all.
3 - 40 Hours of Diablo III Proves Fatal
An 18-year-old Taiwanese gamer named Chuang reportedly died in July of 2012 after a marathon 40-hour Diablo III session. And get this, he was at AN INTERNET CAFE at the time. Maybe these places should take a tip from bars and start "cutting off" people who've had enough. "OK, folks, closing time, you don't have to buy a home in Animal Crossing but you can't stay here!"
Anyway, Chuang was crashed out by a terminal in an Internet cafe when he was awoken by an employee. He then managed to stand up, took a few steps around, and then collapsed. No cause of death was identified at the time, and police were investigating what might have led to Chuang's untimely demise.
4 - Chinese Man Plays for 650 Hours
