Gameaholics Anonymous: Gamers Confess To Spending Ten Hours Each Day Glued To Video Games

ESET study shows gamers would rather compromise their own safety than miss out playing their favourite game.

Whether it’s Pokémon Go, Grand Theft Auto or World of War Craft, online games are addictive. And a new piece of research from internet security firm ESET has revealed just how hooked some gamers have become. The study revealed that one in ten gamers admit they have played a game continuously for between 12 – 24 hours, while six percent of gamer-extremists confessed to playing continuously for over 24 hours at one time, essentially spending two whole waking days in fantasy worlds.

The study looked at the attitudes of 500 gamers and revealed that on average 83 percent play their favourite games for around two hours every day, ten percent of respondents admit to playing between two to five hours on average each day, and a worryingly three percent admit to playing more than ten hours a day. Interestingly, when respondents were asked if they were obsessed with gaming only 14 percent confessed to being so.

When respondents were asked if they used security software on their gaming computer over 52 percent said no because of the following reasons:

• 12 percent said it slowed down their computer
• 8 percent said it interrupted their gaming experience
• 20 percent said they didn’t need to
• 13 percent said they didn’t like the pop ups

Other findings for the study revealed that when respondents were asked if they would turn their security software off if it was slowing down their machine 36 percent said yes. In addition to this, when respondents were asked what was more important security of frame-rate 32 percent said frame-rate.

It is definitely not a wise move to turn off a security solution because you feel it is interrupting your gaming session. As a gamer most of the games you play will involve many a long hour of hard work and invested effort and if your machine was to become compromised the risk of malware stealing your login credentials is massively increased. Cybercriminals could then utilise your gaming account for nefarious purposes that could include botting and or gold/item farming. While there’s a good chance you will get your account back after it’s been banned, providing you can prove it was compromised, it’s the downtime that causes so much hassle. Internet security is your first line of defence and should not be switched off or removed for any reason whatsoever.

Read more on ESET Ireland’s official blog.

The Internet survey was carried out in August 2016 by Google Consumer Surveys for ESET on a demographically representative sample of over 500 gamers in the United Kingdom.

 Stay up to date with latest threats with ESET Ireland’s blog or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

[su_box title=”About ESET®” style=”noise” box_color=”#336588″][short_info id=’60260′ desc=”true” all=”false”][/su_box]