Gaming Madness in China: Grand Theft Auto, Divorce, and Beating Up Drunks

For the first time in a while, it seems, this week’s gaming madness roundup doesn’t include any murder! Hooray! Nope, today we’ve got simpler and slightly less depressing stories from the world of Chinese gaming.

Punching a Drunk Guy: The Next Best Thing to Playing Games?

In the Shandong city of Heze last week, a gamer named Wang and his friends hit the internet cafe to play online games. Late that night after a marathon session they headed out into the fresh air again for a break, and came across an obviously drunk man. Wang had the bright idea to drag him into an alley and beat him senseless, in an apparent attempt to capture the adrenaline rush of fighting someone in a video game.

Luckily, neighbors heard the scuffle and called the police, who came and rescued the drunk man and detained Wang and his friends. The group has since been formally arrested.

(QQ Games)

Wife “Steals” Car to Make Point to Game-Addicted Husband

Grand Theft Auto isn’t as much fun when the auto in question is yours. A Zhejiang man surnamed Zhou found that out the hard way on Monday. Zhou, a big online gamer, was on his way home from making a delivery in a van he and his wife had scrimped and saved to purchase, when he got stuck in traffic and realized he wasn’t going to make it home in time for a 3:00 game event. Luckily, there was an internet cafe nearby, so Zhou pulled over, parked, put on the emergency brake, and headed in to play.

When he emerged after an hour or so of virtual carnage in his favorite game, he discovered that the van was gone. He called the police to report the theft, but unfortunately he had parked in a blind spot not covered by local surveillance cameras so police didn’t hold out much hope of finding it. Deciding he needed to face the music, Zhou called his wife to confess he’d lost the car. But before he could, she began berating him for his stupidity.

It turned out that by chance, Zhou’s wife happened across the van while she was walking. Discovering it unlocked in front of an internet cafe and immediately guessing what had happened, Zhou’s wife drove the van home herself to make sure it didn’t really get stolen. But she didn’t tell Zhou she’d done it in the hopes that the shock of finding his car “stolen” would help him reassess his priorities.

There’s no word yet on whether or not the lesson stuck.

(QQ Games)

Mortgaging the House to Pay for Fake Armor: Not a Great Move

Continuing in the theme of marital not-so-bliss, we have the tale of Sun Rui and Liu Fan, a couple who dated happily for three years before getting married. In their second year of marriage, Liu Fan got into internet games in a big way. At first, Sun was accepting of his wife’s gaming habit, but as she started spending more and more money on it, it became obvious that things could not continue. Even Liu eventually admitted this, and agreed to give up her internet gaming addiction.

Unfortunately that’s easier said than done, and with Sun on a different work schedule that made it hard for him to police her actions, she quickly fell off the wagon and got back into gaming. She spent so much on in-game items (which as we pointed out yesterday can get very expensive) that she eventually mortgaged the couple’s house. At least, that’s what Sun says. Liu says she was taking out the mortgage to invest the money in stocks, but that some of it was spent on daily necessities.

Eventually Sun filed for divorce. That might seem like a pretty extreme result for a dispute that was originally just caused by online gaming, but compared to some of the things we’ve seen, divorce really isn’t too bad.

(QQ Games)

Gaming madness in China is our roundup of the latest crazy (and sometimes horrifying) stories from China’s gaming community. You can read about more gaming madness in China here.