This seems a little insensitive given the original is about a friend dying from drug overdose and video games aren't deadly.
I'm not taking about weekend poker players, here... I mean people who've lost their wife, kids, house, and job to a gambling habit. They have zero savings, mountains of debt, and if you lend them $20 to get groceries, they'll go hungry after gambling it away?
Modern video games are designed by highly paid, PHd-level behavioral scientists to be as habit-forming as possible. If you're vulnerable to it, you're going to have the same kind of struggles getting away from video games as a heroin addict would from junk.
The lack of immediately lethal consequences is only part of the problem... Addicts can ruin their lives, and take their families and friends to the point of no return, even without the possibility of something as serious as an overdose.
Video game addiction still exists and can be bad but it's probably nowhere near as detrimental as gambling addiction.
Video game addiction may not take all your money, but it can definitely devour the person. It'll leave you just as hollowed out and functionlly limited as a drinking problem. It's the core nature of self-medication, regardless of the mechanism of medication.
The wifes and kids are secondary victims there. The tragedy is not that the addict lost them. Them leaving is them getting chance at better life.
The tragedy is that wifes and kids were likely mistreated for years and went through hell too. The wifes earnings were lost to addiction too and she did not even had fun playing. The kids were missing school supplies and had to live in tense environment where one parent was addict and other constantly overstressed and very likely cracking.
If this is something you have personal experience with, I'm sorry for what you had to endure, and I hope your life has gone in a better direction.
(And in places where heroin is legal, addicts rarely die from overdose.)
That said, death is not all that can ruin a life.