Gamer attitudes on the gaming addiction topic.
Gamer attitudes on the gaming addiction topic.
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Gamers speak out at WHO’s classification of gaming addiction as mental health disorder

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Gamers are fighting back against the World Health Organization (WHO), which said yesterday that “gaming disorder” will appear in a new draft of the organization’s International Classification of Diseases, a compendium of medical conditions.

While a small percentage of gamers may suffer from gaming addiction, just as other people suffer from overuse of the internet or mobile phones, the gamers resented the notion that a passion for games can be described as a mental health disorder, according to a Qutee report that surveyed 800 gamers and was curated by eight gaming influencers.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.