Games That Ruined People's Lives

We already know that Fortnite: Battle Royale is threatening to derail teenagers' educations, but just because you're an adult don't assume that you're out of the danger zone. As of August 2018, the game has a staggering 125 million players. A game doesn't get that many players by catering exclusively to kids, and Fortnite's 100-player deathmatches have captured the attention of children, senior citizens, and everyone in-between.

That includes married couples, many of whom find the combination of Fortnite's quick-paced gameplay and ongoing storylines impossible to resist. If that sounds like you, well, watch out: there's a lot more at stake than just another Victory Royale. According to the UK's Divorce Online, Fortnite has been cited in over 200 of the divorce applications handled by the company in 2018. "These numbers equate to roughly five percent of the 4,665 petitions we have handled since the beginning of the year," Divorce Online explains via press release. "As one of the largest filers of divorce petitions in the U.K. is a pretty good indicator" that the game is bringing marriages to an unceremonious end.

Now, Divorce Online makes its hay off of failed marriages, and Fortnite is one of the biggest things on the planet. This release is probably an attempt to get some free press courtesy of gaming's biggest trend. Still, who knows? Next time you fire up Fortnite, consider starting Duos squad with your loved one.

There's a time and a place for everything, and for Solitaire, it's definitely not the office in the middle of the work day. Try telling that to the millions and millions of people who've played Solitaire on their Windows machines since the classic card game's best-known digital recreation debuted in 1990. Originally included in Windows as a way to make users more comfortable with Microsoft's visual operation system, Solitaire—all three versions of it—went on to become the most-used piece of software on the platform, and one of the most popular games of all time.   

But for Edward Greenwood IX, a former employee of the New York City government, a quick round of the classic time-waster ended with life-changing results. In 2006, then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the city's Albany office, where Greenwood worked as an assistant. While Bloomberg posed for photos with employees, he saw Solitaire up on Greenwood's monitor. Greenwood lost his job three weeks later, ending a six-year career in city government. Solitaire was the reason.

"There's nothing wrong with taking a break," Bloomberg said, defending his decision, "but during the business day at your desk, that's not appropriate behavior." Greenwood left his position immediately, receiving no severance pay or advance notice, and while he claims not to hold a grudge, he doesn't think that Bloomberg's decision was fair, either. Greenwood claims to be a hard worker who always got his work done on time. "He's the boss, so if this is the way he wants it handled, there's nothing I can do about it," Greenwood admitted. "But am I happy about it? No."

In the United States, Dragon Quest is a popular but relatively niche video game series. In Japan, it's a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Universal Studios Japan is getting its own Harry Potter Land-like Dragon Quest-themed attraction. Despite the rumors, the day a new Dragon Quest game comes out isn't a national holiday, but it might as well be. The series' first portable entry, the Nintendo DS' Dragon Quest IX, was so popular that hundreds of people crowded together in public spaces for months, working through the game together while enjoying the game's newly implemented social features.

Still, you can have too much of a good thing, as viewers of the Japanese reality show Is It OK If We Follow You Home? learned. In one episode, the camera crew tracked a 43-year-old engineer named Kaccho from the streets of Osaka into his small apartment, which was stuffed full of valuable Dragon Quest memorabilia. But Kaccho isn't just a collector—he's an active gamer, who claims that franchise's massively multiplayer online role-playing installment, Dragon Quest X, destroyed his family.

"I used to look after my kid until I started gaming too much," Kaccho says, and fondly recounts memories of playing Dragon Quest X alongside his daughter. It didn't last. Thanks to Kaccho's non-stop gaming, his wife filed for divorce and took the child with her (Kaccho tried to get custody of his daughter, but lost in court). Now, he has no contact with either his ex or his kid, and whiles away the time in Dragon Quest X by playing as a digital recreation of his daughter. Kaccho claims that he's lonely without his child, but he hasn't made much of an effort to contact her, either—after all, there are still so many monsters left to kill.

Cheating in online games sucks for everyone except for the cheater, but it doesn't normally ruin lives—unless you happen to live in Japan. A few years ago, Japanese police arrested three teens for creating and selling cheats for the free-to-play multiplayer shooter, Sudden Attack, and charged them with criminal offenses.

Allegedly, the trio made about $80,000 selling cheats to other players, most of which were developed by a 17-year-old high school student and an 18-year-old college senior (the third member of the group advertised the final products using online streaming services). That's a lot of money, and Japanese authorities took notice. All three members of the group were charged with "obstruction of business"—in other words, by making Sudden Attack less fun to play, the cheats were hurting publisher Nexon's bottom line. That's backed up by the number of complaints Nexon received about cheaters, which it forwarded on to police, although Nexon promises that the authorities' decision to pursue a criminal case was made on the police's "own volition."

The case marked the first time that cheat-makers faced criminal charges in Japan, although it wouldn't be the last. About a year later, police arrested a 30-year-old man for selling cheats and super-powered accounts for free-to-play games like Alliance of Valiant Arms, Special Force 2 and Dragon Nest, raising about $168,000—and violating Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Law, which protects companies' trade secrets—in the process.

With the rise of esports and streaming, video game gambling has become a real and serious problem. Not only is the video game gambling industry largely unregulated—and, therefore, on shaky legal ground in many countries—but a large portion of the video game-playing audience  (especially those who glom onto popular YouTubers) is made up of children.

It's a combination that's very, very illegal, as some big gaming personalities have learned the hard way. In summer 2016, a YouTuber known as HonorTheCall revealed that two other Counter-Strike: GO streamers, Trevor "TmarTn" Martin and Thomas "ProSyndicate" Cassell, promoted the Counter-Strike betting site CSGO Lotto on their channels—a site that Martin and Cassell also happened to own. It's a complicated issue—ZAM has a good explanation at its site—but suffice it to say that both Martin and Cassell are currently facing civil lawsuits, including one from a mother who claims that her son, a minor, followed Martin and Cassell's instructions and subsequently lost quite a bit of money gambling online.

The case of Dylan Rigby and Craig "NepentheZ" Douglas' is more straightforward. In court, both men pled guilty to allegations that they encouraged fans to check out the website FutGalaxy, where users can use FIFA coins (which are purchased for real money) to bet on actual sports events. Not only are many of Douglas' fans minors (Douglas even claimed—incorrectly—that it was okay for kids to use FutGalaxy in some of his videos), but FutGalaxy doesn't verify users' ages before letting them bet online. That got Rigby and Douglas in trouble with British authorities, who charged both with criminal offenses—the first time anyone has ever faced criminal charges for video-game-based betting—and ordered them to pay a cumulative £265,000 in fines and prosecution fees. Ouch.

Do virtual items have real-world value? According to the Dutch Supreme Court, they do—that's how the court explained its decision to convict a teenager for theft after he attacked another kid and forced the victim to turn over an amulet and mask that he'd earned in the online role-playing game Runescape. 

The real-life mugging took place in 2007, when the 15-year-old assailant and a lackey pulled a knife on his 13-year-old target and beat on the poor gamer until the teen agreed to boot up Runescape and drop the items in question, leaving them available for the attacker to claim. At the very least, that's assault—even if the property was virtual, the beating was very, very real. The defendant's lawyers argued that the mask and amulet "were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value," but the court disagreed.

"The time and energy [the teen] invested" while earning the items gave them an intrinsic value—at least to the player—and the court found the mugger guilty of theft and sentenced him to 144 hours of community service, which would probably be enough time to grind out an amulet and mask of his own if he wasn't too busy, y'know, serving time.