A man in Siberia has filed a lawsuit against Bethesda Game Studios, the company behind the video game Fallout 4, after he lost his job and his marriage after a three-week binge. The 28-year-old Krasnoyarsk native downloaded the game onto his computer, intending to play just a few nights—instead, he did not break away for three weeks straight. “If I knew that this game could have become so addictive, I would have become a lot more wary of it,” the man said in a statement. “I would not have bought it, or I would have left it until I was on holiday or until the New Year holidays.”
During his binge, he skipped work, causing him to lose his job, neglected his social life, causing him to lose his marriage, and deferred even basic human functions like sleeping and eating. The game is to blame, he said in the lawsuit. He is seeking 500,000 rubles ($7,000) from the company for emotional distress, RT reports.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind in Russia. The law firm representing the man said they want to “see how far we can go regarding this case.”
A similar case out of Hawaii yielded a rare win for an addicted game player. In 2010, Craig Smallwood won his case, in which he sued the maker of Lineage II, claiming his addiction to the game caused him to spend over 20,000 hours playing it. At the time, The Register reported that Smallwood had to be hospitalized and continues to suffer extreme and serious emotional distress and depression that requires regular treatment and therapy.
Cases of video-game addiction have at times led to fatal outcomes. It is overall more prevalent in Asia than in North America and Europe, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Internet gaming disorder is considered a “condition for further study” in the DSM-5. This means it’s not an official disorder, but one that warrants more study.