7

This articles states:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/06/chinese-woman-blinded-one-eye-playing-game-likened-electronic/

The 21-year-old woman suddenly lost sight in her right eye after playing the game for the whole day over the weekend ... in Dongguan, Guangdong province, according to the South China Morning Post. She was diagnosed as having suffered retinal artery occlusion caused by severe eye strain.

However, I'm skeptical.

Improve this question
6
  • 8
    checks hours played on WoW, Overwatch and StarCraft 2 - dunno about mobile games, but at least Blizzard games don't seem to cause blindness. Jokes aside, now - nothing against the telegraph, but this one article smells like viral marketing. No names, on a place where local news aren't easily accessible, making the game seem desirable to the point of people inflicting self harm... I'm skeptical too. – T. Sar Oct 6 '17 at 20:48
  • 3
    The telegraph article is a retelling from a Hong Kong newspaper that is citing a Chinese news site as a source. However, searching for the original Chinese name of the game in the alleged "source" yields only adds or things only remotely related to the game. No blindness or anything like that turned up. I can't really read Chinese and I'm using a tool to dig there, so I'm not confident enough to post an answer just yet, but this does seem to be a hoax or some sort of viral marketing. – T. Sar Oct 6 '17 at 21:03
  • 3
    @T.Sar I've heard about "friends not seeing much of you" if you play, never the other way around... – GGMG-he-him Oct 6 '17 at 23:39
  • 7
    I'm old enough to remember claims that doing too much of something else caused you to go blind. – Andrew Grimm Oct 7 '17 at 3:02
  • 4
    Research on the disease listed indicates that it is essentially the equivalent of a heart attack, just in the retina. "Eye strain" usually refers to the lens or iris muscles getting tired, is often caused by reading in dim light and disappears by itself over time. These muscles don't come too close to the retinal artery. – John Dvorak Oct 7 '17 at 16:16

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .