A Chinese gamer was recently rushed to a hospital on a stretcher after a nonstop 20-hour video game marathon left him paralyzed from the waist down.
The unidentified man begged his friends to continue playing his unfinished game for him as he was being lifted out of the internet cafe in the afternoon of Jan. 28, but it was not reported what game he got so hooked on.
The gamer from Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, began playing the game on the evening of Jan. 27, according to Chinese media via MailOnline.
The man was trying to go to the toilet the next day when he realized he couldn’t move the lower part of his body, prompting his friends to call for an ambulance.
“It seems he had lost sensation completely, and couldn’t move at all. We had to call for an ambulance,” one of his friends was quoted saying.
A footage of his rescue uploaded on the video-sharing site Pear Video shows the gamer’s friends assisting paramedics in transporting him from his chair to a stretcher.
The man is reportedly still being observed at the hospital.
In China, where internet addiction, including online gaming, is considered a clinical disorder, a growing number of parents have resorted to admitting their children into rehabilitation camps that specialize in curbing digital addiction.
“King of Glory”, one of China’s most popular games, which attracts more than 50 million gamers playing at the same time, has been dubbed as the “internet heroin”. The mobile phone game recently had one critically ill boy spend his mother’s 150,000 yuan ($24,000) fund, which was supposed to pay for his treatment.
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