• Persistent and recurring internet use to play games, usually with other people, and results in impairment. 

• Some of the impairments include user losing interest in hobbies due to gaming, continued excessive use of video games despite jeopardizing or losing a significant relationship, job, career, or education opportunity, and using video games to escape or relieve negative moods.

• A common microtransaction in video games is a loot box, which can be summarized as buying a box containing one or many randomly generated goods, skins, or currencies. Loot boxes usually have sound effects, music, and lights being triggered (like a slot machine), when you buy one; and not all loot boxes will provide the buyer with a valuable item every time, rather, only from time to time (Raneri et al. 2022).

Facts about excessive gaming

• Powerful correlations between addictive gaming behaviors and negative outcomes were when the user spent more than four hours daily gaming, which increased the probability of a negative outcome occurring by 5.3 times (André et al. 2020).

• Online gaming is more dangerous than offline gaming, as research has discovered how gambling and online video games have become intrinsically intertwined (Raneri et al. 2022). Gambling within video games is called “Microtransactions,” which refer to the user spending real money to attain virtual currency, goods, or costumes for their avatar or weapons (Raneri et al. 2022).