Death in an Internet Cafe Friday, May 19, 2006

As reported by the BBC and MSNBC, a 28-year-old man in South Korea died after playing Starcraft at an Internet cafe for 50 hours straight.

The man, identified by his family name, Lee, started playing Starcraft on 3 August. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep, said the police.

"We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion," a Taegu provincial police official told the Reuters news agency.

He was taken to hospital following his collapse, but died shortly after, according to the police. It is not known whether he suffered from any previous health conditions.

They added that he had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.

—BBC.co.uk

And this isn't the first. Another South Korean man, a 24-year-old, died after an 86-hour marathon in 2002, according to vunet.com, and a 27-year-old Taiwanese man died some 10 days later after a 32-hour session (also from vunet).

I know what it's like to be so sucked in that you want to play for 8 or 10 hours at a time. But ya gotta eat, right? What the hell is the matter with these guys?