Police in Taipei have once again warned of the health hazards associated with spending long periods of time playing video games, after the death of a man who is said to have played an online game all night at a cybercafe.
A police officer surnamed Yang (楊) at Daan Precinct (大安分局) yesterday said a 45-year-old man surnamed Wu (吳) suffered a heart attack after playing popular combat video game League of Legends (英雄聯盟) for five hours.
Yang said a postmortem examination indicated Wu, who was found dead in the cybercafe’s smoking room, did not have any external injuries or signs of having engaged in violence, and that the case was not being treated as suspicious.
The incident occurred on June 26, but the police had to wait for an official postmortem report before announcing the death.
An attendant at the cafe said Wu was a regular, adding that he came in every few days to play League of Legends for several hours at a time.
Three college students, who were also playing video games at the cafe, saw Wu sitting in the smoking room motionless in the early morning, but they thought he was sleeping.
Returning to smoke about two hours later, they noticed Wu was still sitting in the same position, and on closer inspection they realized he was not breathing.
“We saw he was not breathing. We were shocked to realize he was dead. So we alerted the attendant, who reported to the police,” one student said.
“The man came in and paid for a seat for five hours. He played a game and after he finished, we saw him going to the smoking room,” the attendant said. “He is a regular and we thought he was resting, so we did not want to disturb him.”
Yang said a preliminary investigation indicated that Wu’s death stemmed from sitting in the same position for a long time.
Wu’s family said he was from Kaohsiung, but moved to Taipei 10 years ago for manual labor jobs, and that he would go to cybercafes to play video games when he could afford to do so.
It is the second case in the past month of death after heavy video gaming — a man in his 40s surnamed Chen (陳) was found dead in front of his computer in his bedroom in Taoyuan on June 14.
Chen’s parents said he had been unable to find work since his right leg was amputated after an accident at a factory when he was 26 years old.
They said he received monthly welfare benefits due to his physical disability, adding that because of his immobility and unemployment, he mostly stayed at home to play video games and surf the Internet.
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