A man in China had to be picked up by paramedics from an internet café. After 20 hours of non-stop gaming, he could no longer feel his legs.
According to Newsweek, a man went into an internet café in Jiaxing, China, last Saturday evening. He played the same game for 20 consecutive hours without taking a break. When he wanted to go to the bathroom, he could no longer feel his legs.
A friend of the man told the media: “The man completely lost all feeling and couldn’t move at all. We had to call an ambulance.”
Even while the man was strapped to a stretcher and carried out of the internet café by paramedics, he pleaded for his friends to help him finish the game. The man was taken to a hospital on Sunday afternoon last week.
Neither the man’s identity nor the name of the game that captivated him so much is known.
A video of the incident can be seen on the Pearvideo site.
China Struggles with Online Addiction
The incident of the paralyzed man has already been heavily discussed online, as the Chinese site QQ reports. Apparently, some people are drawing parallels between marathon sessions in internet cafés and flights in economy class, the so-called “economy class syndrome,” a thrombosis in the leg.
As Newsweek notes, China has around 565 million gamers. Since 2008, “internet addiction,” known as digital heroin, has been recognized as a clinical disorder there. Since then, the Chinese government has taken various measures to combat the problem.
In 2017, there were time restrictions for young players on the mobile MOBA “Honor of Kings,” a mobile variant of LoL. State media referred to it as “poison”:
Anti-addiction measures – Will the gaming time for LoL in China be heavily limited?
