Man dies after playing online games for three days, lies dead for hours in internet café

Other gamers at the internet café didn’t notice that the unemployed man had died of cardiac failure

Customers play computer games at an Internet cafe in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China. (REUTERS/Stringer)

A 32-year-old man died after a three-day internet gaming binge, the second time an online gamer died in Taiwan this year. Fellow café members failed to notice the man had died, and he is thought to have lain dead for several hours as gamers continued to play.

The man was found in an internet café on January 8, motionless and sprawled on a table, and was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead from cardiac failure, a police spokesperson told CNN. The man’s surname was Hsieh and he had been playing games in the café in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second biggest city, since January 6.

The man had been unemployed for some time and frequented internet cafés, police said. He would often disappear for two or three days at a time.

Police told CNN that gamers in the café continued as if nothing happened, even when police and paramedics arrived to check in on the man. It is thought he had been dead for several hours before they arrived, as his body had stiffened.

The man was a regular customer to the café who would regularly play for a number of days, according to local news reports.

"When tired, he would sleep face down on the table or doze off slumped in his chair," a staff member told the Taipei Times. "That is why we were not aware of his condition in the beginning.”

Another man died in Taipei on New Year’s Day after playing video games for five days straight.