Horrors of Mobile Game Addiction

Welcome back to the Papa Meat channel. How you doing? How you doing? Come on and sit down because today we're going to talk about mobile game addiction. Which you know me, I like talking about mobile games and the kind of weird shit that goes on there. Sometimes it goes just a little too far. With the birth of modern smartphones, you don't need a big fancy PC to play a decent video game, right? In recent years, mobile games have exploded. In 2023 alone, over 700,000 mobile games are now available at your fingertips.

Having a massively addicted game in your pocket at all times can lead to some wild cases of mobile game addiction. And when you throw in the fact that most free-to-play games are filled to the brim with shady microtransactions and predatory practices, it could drive people to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on in-game items.

Uh-oh! That's why you use mommy's credit card. Uh oh!

That's why you use mommy's credit card.

That's why you dig deep into the bottom of your mom's purse and get that little piece of that square piece of plastic out. So there's silly numbers on it? What do those mean? Put that in! You can get every, you want all the skins in the game?

Yeah.

Gotta dig a little deeper.

Big names like PUBG Mobile have literally made billions of dollars since its creation. In 2024, nearly $92 billion was generated through the mobile game market as a whole.

We are in the wrong business.

Papa Meat Mobile Game?

If there's any indie devs out there, hit us up.

So strap in as we take a look at the addicting world of mobile games. We can't talk about mobile games without talking about one of the most recent heavy hitters that seems to have taken the world by storm, which is the Umeh Masume Pretty Derby. We played it on stream.

Show me playing a little bit. Special week runs off again in a panic. However.

Uh oh, out of my way!

Oh!

It's a good time. It's mostly a novel. Uh-oh! Out of my way! Kirby is a Japanese mobile game that was released back in 2021, but recently has become majorly popular in the US after its recent English release in June of this year. Umu Musame is a gacha game where you can train racehorses that may have been reincarnated as anime horse girls to participate in races. It's a game where basically like people that get hard over anime girls, they are horses. But they're cute! And they're kind of wacky and a bit silly. It's awesome!

The game has recently blown up to new heights on Twitch and this has resulted in players becoming fans of real life horse racing. It's pretty funny. People translating their horse racing gambling into real life like Kentucky Derby

like race gambling has been a real treat. Because the characters are based on existing race horses some have gained new following based on the game's success. How silly and cute and fun. But of course people took things way too far and started traveling to the ranches where

they are kept in order to trespass on private property to take photos of the horses. Crazy to break into a stable.

I don't know.

Do you know where it's at?

Cinnamon?

Is it on the highway? Doesn't my wife

Nick standing in the corner like Blair Witch-style It now the early does raise that see I wish the game was like jockeys riding horse girls It should have been very tiny extremely small French and Italian jockeys on top of these anime girls and they're like

Right on the track.

You would have, I would have been way on board with that.

It's crazy.

But to understand how people are pushed to this point, we first need to understand how mobile games are so addicting. The developer of these games aren't just working on passion projects. Yeah, right. They're tapping into human psychology to create an addictive experience. They're literally just creating new forms of cigarettes and cocaine

That's just dopamine. That's where it just keeps tapping it. Oh It's like an IV drip for a dopamine Hey, we just want to thank today's sponsor real quick star Ford systems They hooked us up with this very mint beautiful PC and hell I trust them. I mean look at it I wish I was from here If you're looking for a new system be sure to check out the link in the description if you want some nice high quality big big gaming PCs right I'm

able to play crisis from 2007 with max settings on this bad boy yeah but your computer can't do that so thank you Star Forge for sponsoring this video and hey back to the video every sound effect graphic and piece of music is implemented with the goal of evoking a dopamine response. Every time you win a horse race in Uma Musume, you have a slight lobotomy. These games thrive off utilizing reward systems like loot boxes that elicit feelings of anticipation

and excitement that keep people coming back for more. Not only are they paying for these items, but the results are unpredictable, meaning people will often spend more than expected in search of the specific drop they want. And it doesn't help that many in-game items and cosmetics are locked behind a specific window of time. Implementing artificial scarcity tactics like this push people to play and spend money to avoid missing out on an exclusive item they'll never be able to earn otherwise.

Some popular games can be unnecessarily greedy. In Diablo Immortal, one streamer had to spend around $15,000 before he was finally able to unlock a rare item a five-star legendary gem Is this an end of season April Fool's joke? I left hate that deal. Do you guys not have phones?

We don't have any plans at the moment to do PC

You guys not have phone yeah, you guys

You play your tablet to Oh Blizzcon thing fuck that was for that game, you know, whatever I think one of those guys on stage got out. Cut all of this, even if that's right. Many fear that these games are training children to become gambling addicts and the dopamine release that comes from a flashy mobile game seems to be no different than a typical slot machine, imposing the same types of random chance outcomes that keep people hooked for hours on end. And there have been reports of kids as young as 12 years old becoming so addicted to mobile

games that when taken away have led to home and the whole house was destroyed. My mom took away my Kindle Fire and I was like, my boy Dong Nguyen, a 28 year old programmer from, huh?

Nguyen.

My boy Dong Nguyen, a 28 year old programmer from Vietnam, created a floppy birds back in 2014. Remember floppy birds? You have fun with floppy birds, man. Who didn't sit there and they were like...

🎵 🎵

Try again.

That was me. And robot unicorn attack. 🎵 Always I wanna be with you 🎵 🎵 And make believe with you 🎵 🎵 And live in harmony, harmony 🎵 🎵 Online when it's cold, when it's cold 🎵 🎵 Outside 🎵 harmony out loud. When it's cold, when it's cold outside and the heat is in, hold on to the night

there will be no rain. Always I wanna be with you. That's a good one dude. One of the most viral phone games at the time, if not of all time. It amassed over 90 million players and was earning up to $50,000 a day. Despite the massive success, Dong was unhappy

due to the hordes of criticism that came with his newfound fame. Like people accused him of ripping off designs from Nintendo. You know what I'd say? I'm Dong McGowan. Why don't you go yourself? Well, yeah, if I ripped off him in Nintendo the why he's in Nintendo donut. Well, yeah, it's a green pipe It's a fucking bird

Once you chill those fucksuckers over there, you know what also my grandfather's Italian and he's pissed about Mario You think Italians look like that put up Mario and then put up fucking Italian, man And in the end he removed the app from the app store claiming that it was ruining lives due to how addicting it was I heard

I thought he removed it because like loan sharks were coming out for him trying to break his legs

Loan sharks might get 50 grand a day I had to get a get a 1.5 billion dollar loan from the Russian mafia to make flappy birds

Why have you not paid this back yet?

It's popping off, just give me time! One woman, frustrated over her husband's gaming addiction, took to the internet to share her experience and ask for advice. According to her, his obsession with games age of Z has become the biggest issue in their marriage. Could be a lot of worse things. What if he came too early?

God, that's horrible. Not only has he spent over a thousand dollars on the game within a few months, but he's become so focused on it and it's starting to humiliate her in social situations. All right, now I feel like... First off, a thousand bucks over a few months. Like, what's a few months? Four months? Is he a grown man with a full-time job?

Don't get me wrong, a thousand dollars is a lot of money, but still sounds like Parker just has some extra income and I he goes out He has to hang out with the dog friends that she has and now she's like, okay So you're not gonna hang out and talk with us during a parent informational night at their kids kindergarten She spent the entire night gaming on his phone She would nudge him to remind him to put it away But he would only sneer at her and take it back out a few minutes later

Yeah, just I hate to keep being on this boy's side, but listen, Parents' Informational Night and Kindergartener, what the f*** are they learning, dude? You know what a square is?

Yeah.

What about triangle?

Yeah.

I'm gonna go back to age of Z.

What if their child is a troublemaker, bullying other kids?

Well, then once again, he has to have the distraction of Z to get through this tumultuous time. There are plenty of stories of mobile games potentially ruining an entire family. In one case, a child explains how showing his father a game called Free Fire slowly tore the entire family apart. Both his two sons stopped playing it five years prior, while their father continued playing it every minute of every day, claiming he's quote, lost everything because of the game.

Here's the thing too, every time I hear these things things I like look at the game and I'm like shit does not look fun like what would like oh that's kind of like imagine put it free fire of the screen imagine looking at that and being like yeah okay guess I'll play for a while for every day every minute of every day I don't know anytime he isn't able to play free fire he becomes irritable and stops speaking to anyone in the family and this leads to him screaming at everyone for various petty reasons

Whose bike is this? It's in the garage where the bikes are supposed to be Like that you just need to go to the grocery store you can play free fire you get back Opens the doors and sit in this car It sounds like a terrible person this guy the last guy in this guy the first guy was cool So I spend like 250 bucks a month on a game.

I like for my, my three-year-olds in Ken or my four-year-olds in kindergarten, he likes apple juice and he colors outside the lions. Go mean, what can I not have a break? This guy's just like, it's even the kids were like, yeah, could you just maybe go for a catch or something? Are you can read it?

Yeah, that's pretty offensive thing. You shouldn't say that. I got the character there didn't I? But things began to escalate when the family found out that there are young women in the gaming friend group that he flirtatiously

talks to.

Okay.

Now he's trying to get a little pussy on the side. That's a guy who plays in the dark too in the living room. Here's a light come on, the cell phone screen turns off. He's like sitting in the dark.

You see the light there?

The kids at the top of the stairs.

Dad?

You see the light go off. He's in total blackness. Dad, are you gonna go to bed. Just total darkness. Okay, well, I'll see you tomorrow. I love you. Pictures turn around, the glow of the phone starts illuminating again. Goddammit, Dad. One woman became addicted to a team-based multiplayer game,

in which she was a top player that led a high-ranking alliance. Whoa. She used every second of free time at work playing on her phone rather than socializing with coworkers and even admits to occasionally playing while driving. She stopped cooking, doing chores, and even showering, becoming a complete zombie outside of the game.

Her self-worth became tied to it to the point where she kept playing even when she stopped enjoying it. Simply because she didn't want to let everyone down. Okay, so she's kind. Selfless. Angel. That's a not all heroes

bathe. Batman definitely doesn't bathe.

Batman definitely bathes. He's a billionaire. In his penthouse. Getting his dick sucked.

Oh, Alfred. Yeah, it is Dick suck. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Yeah.

Alfred comes in, but see, ah, see, that's the thing. That's the thing with Batman is he has Alfred come in and since he's always been a spoiled child, he has tub time with Alfred. Let me get into the master Wayne.

I don't like that. He's looking right into my eyes.

Geez, Alfred.

Jeez. into my eyes. Geez, Alfred. Geez, Alfred.

It's clean.

Geez, Alfred.

Ah, Alfred, come on. You're scratching me. You're scratching me, Alfred. Stop it.

Have you ever been addicted to a

video game?

You know which game I liked back in the day? There was one called Zombieville. It was like a side scroller where you would walk down. You had to survive a video game. You know which game I liked back in the day? There was one called Zombieville. It was like a side-scroller where you would walk down and you had to survive a bunch of, like basically see how many levels you could last,

but you could like hop in houses and you would get like ammo and stuff there. I liked Fruit Ninja. I liked Robot Unicorn Tank. Well, at least it was ever been addicted to one. No, but I had him on my whenever I had the eye touch. I was like, whoa, I like just in school. I didn't play games.

I liked, I remember the best thing that ever happened to me was it was, I didn't get to do this all the time. My friend was sick and he kept his eye, his brick iPod had like, I like texted me and he was just like, you can use it for the day if you want. And I was like, he had every Lord of the Rings movie on it.

I remember like having that, like the iPod, whatever. And like watching like Return of the King and like crying in class.

Yeah, I did.

I had the Zune.

Of course you did. Mobile Game Whales. In the gaming space, a whale is a player that is willing to spend an unfathomable amount of money on games. The term whale comes from the casino industry referring to gamblers that drop millions of dollars at a time at the tables playing games. Which is also usually your crypto whales. Whales is just somebody with a large amount of money that just throws it.

They spend very happily. They are a goldmine that the mobile game industry actively tries to appeal to by creating high-retention gaming experiences. that the mobile game industry actively tries to appeal to by creating high retention gaming experiences. There are also mid-tier spenders referred to as dolphins and these players are also important as they spend less than whales but more than the average player.

And finally there are minnows, players who spend practically nothing at all. Aka do you see how this is also a lot of terminology that's referred to with also people that perform gay sex Is there something that you know a bear a pup an otter a whale a minnow a dolphin?

I thought they'd call Mike shrimps or something like bottom fishers calm the bottom feet would be good one dude

I don't Peter she just play the game for fun Okay, one woman shares a text thread from her fiancé that reveals that he had spent $600 on Genshin Impact without ever bringing it up to her. Oh, let's see. That's a little, that's a little skeleton in the closet. I didn't know how to tell you.

Also Genshin Impact, that's a big one. People spend tons of money on that game. She was infuriated, rightfully so, seeing as they were living paycheck to paycheck despite working 55 hours a week while he works for Uber ride share. The woman berates him for using their shared emergency card in order to purchase two characters in the game, to which he responds by calling her abusive and controlling. Let woman run away from this man.

Not even man, run away from this boy, this toddler. Okay, like I was told she was gonna drive later, I just wanted to get these two new Fox mains.

What the fuck?

You know how controlling you are right now? She's like we will not be able to afford food Why don't you keep yelling at me? I said kind of it's emotional manipulation. I don't like that shit get him out of there So yeah, don't need you. Yeah toss the ball up. I

Buy an emotionally manipulate them back. Oh

I'm pregnant. That's if you're a girl use that all the time. Oh, dude, I'm pregnant.

That's if you're a girl, use that all the time. Oh, I just could I not buy kind of buy two characters in the game? My period didn't come this month and you might not be the dad. See, but you don't ever don't ever just say I'm pregnant right away. Let it build for a second. You think that words going to pick up fast on that?

It's like what and then you walk away. It's like just in there for a while. And then if it gets really bad, don't do this. I fear the bad situation.

I don't know.

Maybe cut this next part. I was gonna say then whenever he says go cut that.

We'll cut that part.

The man's entire family started joining in on the accusations eventually encourage him to call off the marriage. They ended things soon after what a dodgeball if they were just engaged. Oh, that's a blessing in disguise. Oh my god, that makes me believe in God. It doesn't she's just like, you know what, the parents come in, I think you should leave her. I mean, that's like, literally, I've got a golden ticket. You know what I mean? Don't literally I'd be like, go to church because you need, you gotta get some payback to give

after that one. Holy hell. Gidget Impact has claimed the wallets of many unsuspecting people, with many racking up far more than a mere $600. In Singapore, a father discovered her 18-year-old daughter spent $20,000 for in-game content using a credit card that was supposed to be used for transportation expenses. And in China, one teenager spent her entire family's life savings, a whopping $64,000

on mobile games. Her mother only found out after checking her bank account and seeing that only 7 cents remained. Her mother told reporters, I'm in a daze.

My head feels like it's going to explode.

I don't even know what, I don't know how you'd process that. Your entire, your whole thing you've worked for your whole life gone.

One child policy.

We have to have some kind of rehabilitation that isn't just kill the child. We have got to, we've got to have something. In a strange turn of events, one man spent so much money on the mobile game, Diablo Immortal, here we go again, that it ended up punishing him. A content creator that goes by JTisAllBusiness,

what a fucking terrible name, spent $100,000 maxing out his barbarian character in the game. 100 grand, bro. Because his character became so overpowered, the game was physically unable to matchmake

him with other players for PvP matches.

This might be a match that I lose, which I'm not even going to say that's a bad thing. Like losing isn't necessarily bad for me because I can lower my rank a little bit and maybe get a Q.

And according to him, he'd have to wait up to 72 hours in queue just to match with one opponent with a similar matchmaking rank. You did not receive much sympathy from the public with one stating, you paid to win. You won. Now you're on a throw with no one else besides you.

Good job. I hope you're happy with yourself.

Holy fuck.

Holy man. Absolutely brutal. My stomach kind of turned. I kind of sat there for a second. I was going to say something else, but I was just like. In one of the more extreme cases of mobile game addiction, a 22 year old man from India took his own life after falling

into massive debt. The victim was heavily engrossed in a mobile betting game to the point of reaching out to his family for money after spending everything he owned. When he lost that money too, he started reaching out to self-help groups in his village and taking loans in order to continue betting. After spending the equivalent of thousands of dollars, he found out that he was later unable to repay

the debts once they started to hassle him to pay the money back. Under the stress of financial ruin and the mounting pressure from lenders, he locked himself in his room and room, myself from the ceiling. This is a comedy video, by the way. That's a deal. And that is, though, that that's the way that that's connected, though, if I had to say is it starts with like something innocent, like a mobile game. But then that leads to gambling addiction and gambling addiction is. I mean, it's that's the dopamine tap.

If you do not have it, you're being like deprived of it. If it's not constantly getting that tap it's torture. I feel horrible for that kid, man That's that's such a horrible addiction man brutal and the people that profit off that snakes Disgusting little demons the game candy crush has a chokehold on moms across the world With thousands upon thousands of levels to complete some have been playing it constantly for well over a decade I know my mom went through a candy crush saga or was it Farmville? That was Farmville on Facebook that I'm surprised there has not been a documentary on that yet

Fargo was being insane I don't know if people I'm gonna people remember Farmville the Millennials and the boomers do boomers Treated that shit like it was real life. It was crazy Well, it's only a simple puzzle game People have come out and admitted that the game feels more addicting to them than heroin. One Candy Crush fan states, quote, I've half dreams about the game and I've been I've started to look at household items as if I could

rearrange them and in threes to make them disappear and get points. That's actually kind of a cool horror movie idea. Kid comes in with his backpack from school. Mom I'm home! And And deliver them. Everything's in threes. Mom, just sitting there like the gardener, the pool boy, whatever. They're dead. Sitting in threes there. She's like, turns around.

Stop moving.

Candy crush.

Bloom house. Don't you dare try to take that shit. Blue house is like, we can make it for $500,000. We'd make $20 million. Jason Bloom.

I can make it for how much?

It's Jason Bloom. Oh my God, I can make it for a million and make $500 million of it?

I hate Jason Bloom.

You can keep believing it and I don't give a shit.

In 2014, a 45 year old woman named Sally Ann Turner from the UK was so addicted to the game that she resorted to stealing money from her disabled mother. Are you there? Who goes there? Is that a good bit? All right, Adam Winger a 38 year old librarian from Utah resigned from his job after stealing $89,000 from the city's personal account He had used an Amazon account Linked to the company card in order to purchase piles of Google Play gift cards so he could spend it on in-game purchases for Game of War it's insane that he's probably the first person to buy a Google Play gift card

that wasn't an elderly person getting scammed by an Indian guy. The one man to go into a Best Buy that isn't an 86 year old woman with an Indian dude on the phone being like,

DO NOT READ IN!

Some of these mobile game heist stories run deep. One of the wildest examples also involves Game of War and the story of Kevin Lee Koh and the embezzlement of $5 million. Kevin, a 51-year-old businessman, worked at Holt of America, a company that produces heavy machinery. And in the span of seven years, he had begun slowly using fake credit card transactions to steal money from the company.

Not only did he use it to buy 49ers tickets, he also bought fancy cars and even plastic surgery for himself. So sick He had taken a liking to the mobile game game of war and willingly spent 1 million dollars worth of micro transactions Eventually people started to notice that money was being siphoned from the company leading to Kevin being caught and pleading guilty to wire fraud and money Laundering he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was forced to pay 4.5 million dollars in restitution to his former employer.

Do people actually think they're going to get away with this shit?

I think it's one of those things where they do it once and then they're like,

I don't know what I noticed.

What if I try again? And it goes again to the point where I feel like you're like, they won't know me. There may also think people have weird ways of justifying it. Well, the company makes this much, they won't notice it, why would they care? While it may seem like an ordinary game, most mobile games are more akin to slot machines than casual way to pass time. It's hard not to be tempted here and there to spend money on a game that you really like,

right? I mean I'd done a f***ing League of Legends even. Do I need a new skin? No.

What the f*** am I?

No. If you want to spend your own money, feel free to, just know that it's a slippery slope that can lead to a lot of disappointment and regret down the road. Thank you so much for watching this video and happy clicking out there. Good luck on your loot crates. We will see you next time. We will see you next time.

Bye bye.