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Friday, September 4, 2020

Death By Gaming

     A 32-year-old man was found dead in an Internet cafe in Taiwan after a marathon three-day gaming binge. This was the island's second death of an online gamer that year. The man, surnamed Hsieh, entered the cafe in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second largest city, on January 6, 2015. An employee found him motionless and sprawled on a table at ten in the morning of January 8. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors pronounced him dead from cardiac arrest.

     Hsieh had been unemployed for some time and Internet cafes were the places he spent most of his time. According to his family, he would disappear for two to three days at a time.

     It was not known exactly how long Hsieh lay dead in the Internet cafe, but police officers said his body had begun to stiffen, so he must have been dead for several hours before they arrived. Gamers in the cafe continued playing as if nothing had happened.

     Surveillance camera footage showed that before he collapsed, Hsieh was involved in a minor struggle. According to the pathologist, cold temperatures and over-exhaustion from the long hours playing games likely contributed to his death.

      The Taipei Times reported that Hsieh had been a regular customer who often played online games for consecutive days. When tired, he would sleep face down on the table or doze off slumped in his chair. That is why employees were not immediately aware he was dead.

     Taiwan was no stranger to deaths from marathon sessions of online gaming. Hsieh's death came after a 38-year-old man was found dead at an Internet cafe in Taipei on January 1, 2015 after playing video games for five days straight. And in 2012, the corpse of a man who died playing online games went unnoticed for ten hours by other gamers and staff.

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