‘Diablo III’ May Have Already Claimed First Real Life Fatality

With a game as hyped as Diablo III, there have been lots of stories circulating around the net since its launch last week. The first was someone who fought through the crashing servers and was able to complete the game in just 13 hours. The next tale came about someone who did a speed run and beat the entire game in six hours after an 11 year wait to get his hands on the game.

There were even reports of someone getting a character to level sixty within the first few days of launch, not to mention the thousands of people who took off work to play the game on launch. But with the crazed fandom, there also comes the possibility of tragedy as well.

Tech blog Buildstarted.com was the first to report the first real world Diabo III related death. Buildstarted reports the loss of his friend and coworker, 32 year old Russell Shirley. After not hearing from his friend for two days, the writer called Shirley’s landlady who found Russell in front of his computer, lost to an apparent heart attack which may have been caused by his gaming binge.

While it has been picked up by the gaming press on various blog sites, no major media outlet has reported on the story yet. We will update this story accordingly once the event has been confirmed.

Regardless of this specific instance’s validity, addiction in gaming is a serious problem. There have been proven cases of death caused by personal neglect or violent outbursts related to gaming addiction whether it has been people not taking care of themselves or others or even the recent case where a woman shook her infant to death because the baby would not stop crying while she was playing Farmville. It is important that gamers know how to play in moderation and pace themselves and focus on taking care of themselves in the real world first and foremost before worrying about spending time in a virtual world.