Reports are surfacing from Russia of legal action brought against Bethesda Game Studios after a man went on a three week binge playing Fallout 4.
It sounds like it could be a marketing stunt, but there is legal paperwork which shows that the case is real. A 28-year-old man from Siberia played the game for 21 days straight, losing his job and his wife as a result.
Man loses job and wife after getting addicted to Fallout 4
Fallout 4 was hotly anticipated, and plenty of gamers can attest to its addictive qualities. However this particular man from Krasnoyarsk took his obsession to extreme lengths and is now paying the price. He stopped turning up for work and was promptly fired, while his wife left him after concluding that he loved the game more than her.
“If I knew that this game could have become so addictive, I would have become a lot more wary of it. I would not have bought it, or I would have left it until I was on holiday or until the New Year holidays,” said the 28-year-old Siberian in a statement, according to RT.
He is suing Bethesda for 500,000 rubles, equivalent to around $7,000, in compensation for the emotional distress caused by his addiction. He is being represented by a law firm that has said that they are willing to “see how far we can go regarding this case.”
Game addicts have previously sued companies
It seems as though the firm and the client are perfectly suited, although the Russian man may be regretting pushing the limits to which one can play video games. While details about the case are few and far between, it seems likely that the man may have been suffering other issues before Fallout 4 came along.
He saw an advert for Fallout 4 and downloaded the game, planning to play it “for a couple of evenings,” which unfortunately turned into a three week binge. It just isn’t normal to do any one thing for 21 days straight, ceasing to eat or sleep properly. However there are legal precedents in this kind of case, which may give the man some hope.
In 2010 a federal judge in the U.S. agreed to listen to case involving a man who had become addicted to Lineage II. Craig Smallwood, of Hawaii, sought damages from the makers of the game after claiming that he would not have started playing if he knew “that he would become addicted to the game.”
It may have been a surprising ruling, but the judge in fact sided with Smallwood and ordered NCsoft of South Korea to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees.
Gamer hit by car as he played popular game
It seems that Fallout 4 is a relatively dangerous hobby to indulge in, as one unfortunate Texas man found out. Ben Rose was hit by a car as he sat playing the game in his own home, but thankfully survived the freak accident.
Rose thanks his gaming chair for his lucky break, saying that it protected him from the worst of the impact. The driver apparently pressed the accelerator pedal instead of the brakes, and came careering through the wall of Rose’s apartment,
The unfortunate gamer was left with a fractured vertebra and a sliced Achilles tendon. There is an ongoing crowdfunding campaign to cover Ben’s medical bills because the driver was uninsured.
