r/StopGaming

You're a married guy with four children aged 11 and under how much time gaming is too much,?

Since i started to play when i got a proper laptop to play, on 2020, because my friends convinced me to play, on that time, it was fun to play, ARAM, 5 vs 5, other thing, it was good, but, since on the beggining of this yesar, i started to play more seriously the game, and went bronze to gold, but last, week, i LOST ALL THE GAMES THAT I PLAYED, yes, i had some bad performance in some games, ngl, but every time it just look that everyone on the other team was better than mine, it wast like a real match, like a good game
it just look that someone was way better then other, and one lane just feeded so much, and so many AFK's and troll's that my willing to play this game just vannish

https://preview.redd.it/f2iex1fv3jbh1.png?width=1092&format=png&auto=webp&s=36fa6e20983ad8f8e1deabdfe7d626edcfb59b0a

https://preview.redd.it/ywyx0b1z3jbh1.png?width=761&format=png&auto=webp&s=11ff82ca75f44154685858ee1be6c02df6f66a44

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I’m going through something difficult and wanted to be honest with you. I’m 24, and I’ve lost over $10,000 gambling. I kept trying to win back what I lost, but it only made things worse. Today I self-excluded myself from every sportsbook app because I know I need to stop.
The hardest part now is that I can’t stop thinking about the money I lost. I keep replaying it in my head, and it’s been really weighing on me. I’m trying to move forward, but I could really use some support and someone to talk to while I work through this.

I used to be insanely addicted to games when I was still in middle school, particularly with this game called Elite Dangerous (which is basically an insanely grindy space trucking simulation game). It was so addicting to the point that I made a Youtube channel on it.

And for a few years, I kept playing and making videos. Immediately after school I started my daily 3-4 hour sessions doing nothing but fly nonexistent spaceships in nonexistent star systems to make nonexistent currency.

But as I entered high school, I started to see how much of a waste it was. This game had absolutely zero benefit to my actual life and made me sink thousands of hours which could've been used for anything else. And how was this supposed to help me in college admissions? Some mediocre YouTube channel can't even compete with literally any internship.

Furthermore, the whole online community (which I was deeply invested in) was filled with bums. There were straight unemployed people who were complaining like babies about the developers' occasional updates in an online video game instead of touching grass outside and looking for jobs. It was quite ridiculous to see so many people stuck in an online, virtual bubble complaining about some features that mildly frustrated them instead of going out in nature or going to the gym.

And so I quit. I stopped uploading videos in the channel and haven't played the game since.

Life has gotten so much better now in high school. Because I liberated myself from this addiction, I've gotten a job, an internship, hit the gym, and actually started living life in the real world. In the bigger picture of someone's lifetime, it's evident that games will never make someone's life better, and that your valuable time is better spent outside fishing and hiking and whatnot.

Summary: Quitting games has been the single most important decision I've ever made. My life has been utterly transformed for the better. The below is a bit long-winded (that's just my style) but hopefully it can help those in throes of addiction.

Background:

Since I was 11 years old, I had been addicted to RuneScape and then when I was 17, I got addicted to League of Legends. I have probably spent more than 800 days of in-game time (almost 20,000 hours) on these games. My parents never let me play during the week, but come the weekend I would play all day and night. Once I reached university, I basically played these games non-stop and that continued when I began full-time work. In 2022, I played more than 1,000 games of League of Legends in less than six months, all while working full-time. I would AFK RuneScape on my work from home days. I was in the top 1% of both games and I was addicted to the progression.

During all that time, I struggled immensely with my mental health and this bled to all aspects of my life: socialising, dating, health and work. Fortunately, I always kept up a decent standard of effort and I didn't let video games completely derail me from my studies and my job. But nonetheless, I lived most of my days in a state of high stress, massive overthinking and anxiety for life. Playing games was what my life revolved around and from the minute I woke up each day, video games were what I would look forward to.

The Decision:

On 31 December 2025, I was on holiday. I had been looking forward to those holidays because that was the time I got to basically play games all day with no responsibility. But something felt different this time. In a few months, I would be turning 30. I felt immensely behind in life: I didn't have a girlfriend, my career wasn't where I wanted it to be and I had only a couple of friends who I didn't see often enough.

In that moment, something clicked and I knew that the biggest reason for my problems was my addiction to video games. In the past, I had quit for a few months here and there but always came back to it. This time felt different. I wasn't a young teenager or twenty-something anymore. I was now a full-on adult and I knew if I kept playing the games, then in 10 years time I'd be in the exact same position. It was shocking that I had to have blown basically all of my youth to realise this.

The first 3 months of quitting were absolute torture. Not a day went by when video games weren't front of mind. I was constantly wrestling with urges and rationalisations to play. For some reason, I never caved in. I began to realise that these games were like poison to me. I really can't emphasise enough how difficult it is in those early months when you're quitting. When video games have been the centre of your life for almost 2 decades, that addiction doesn't go down without a fight.

The Benefits:

Since quitting, I have experienced the following:

• Massive reduction in overthinking.
• Massive improvement in my confidence levels.
• I now crave progression in real life - I work harder and more productively at work and take the gym more seriously.
• EVERYTHING else feels easier when you quit games - working, doing life admin, etc.
• I'm also teaching myself to code to pursue certain side hustles (related to the field I work in).
• I've started playing tennis and have made new friends for the first time in many years.
• I spend lots of time socialising with my friends and family now. I've seen some of my friends more in the last few months than the past 5 years combined.
• I've read more than 10 books this year, including a 1200 page book on the history of the world.
• I now relax with less stimulating entertainment like movies, anime and interesting fiction books.
• I've been going on more dates and feeling much better about my dating prospects.
• I take care of my health a lot more now - I cook for myself and go to sleep on time (it's also a lot easier to sleep without the stimulation of games).
• I even bought an apartment for myself recently and will be moving out of home soon.
• There's probably even more benefits I'm forgetting, but you get the gist.

Lessons:

My theory is that even the most 'problematic' video games aren't problematic for everyone. Some people can play extremely addictive games and still see them as just an 'activity' they can pick up and put down at will. But some of us (and perhaps most people who browse here) have brains which are highly sensitive to the stimulus of these games. When games can combine socialising, competition, status, novelty, exploration, progression, achievement and instant gratification into one package, that can simply be too much for some people. It can overload the brain with so much dopamine and pleasure, it becomes like a poison.

Unlike alcohol or substances, though, this kind of interaction isn't nearly as well documented and again, it doesn't affect everyone to that extent. I know plenty of people who could play the games I played without major issues. But I know for me, there's no 'moderation' because if I played even an hour per day, my life would end up revolving around that hour and I would constantly feel the urge to play more.

I know, deep down in my heart, that these games are simply too much for me and no matter what I do or how hard I try, there's no way for me to play them without them taking over my life. It's simply a case of how my brain reacts to them. Countless experiments to moderate my play time and limit myself (which I can do successfully) doesn't change the fact that when I play these games, they become the only thing I look forward to.

Bottom Line:

If you've ever had a problem with video games, then quit and don't look back. Every day, week and month that goes by without you playing will lead to you moving forward in life in a way you probably never have before. Stack that kind of progression over a year, or multiple years, and you'll end up in a spot you may never have thought possible for yourself. The pleasure of games is absolutely nothing compared to the pleasure of living a genuinely full life in alignment with your goals and values.

Idk man. I think nothing works on me. I've been playing THE FINALS for 3 years (over 1,800 hours) and it genuinely won't let me go. Every time I try to quit, a day later I get this compulsive urge to return, and it's really REALLY hard to fight off. I need to improve my programming skills, find a job, and get something done with my life - but after so many attempts, I'm still addicted. How do I stop this once and for all? What worked for you guys? What activities can actually replace gaming? I've tried reading, but I fall off fairly quickly. Hell, I can't even watch a movie or anime because my brain is just wired for gaming.

I have seen so many of my friends who wanted to be artists but just ended up playing games 24/7. I consider single player games as immersive art forms but playing the same online "E-Sport" is just a really trashy way to waste your youth. I know all the stupid arguments defending online gaming such as making friends but I can guarantee that it is all just propaganda by gaming companies to maximize their profits on the same disgusting game to sell their skins and promote online gambling.

The playerbase of all of their games are always angry and never enjoy anything in their lives. Even the streamers who get paid thousands of dollars to play a game are also angry and raging and complaining.

Just look at the normal lobby of League of Legends, DOTA , OVERWATCH , MARVEL RIVALS , APEX ... everyone is sad and angry . If you play with your friend to have "fun" you will be having a miserable time by their fake matchmaking and sweats or by chance you can have a good match after 100 tries.

Companies found the infinite money glitch : make an online gambling game then profit for 10 years instead of making a new good game every year.

Look at apex , its nearly 10 years full of bugs and cheaters ! they give false promises of "fixing" and improving to just keep the addicted inside the cycle.

Marvel Rivals entered the market to "fix" online gatcha and fomo now it has 3 different fomo gambling events for some gooner summer skins which kids steal their parents credit card to buy.

The "skill" you adapt in an online game is mostly useless in real life (like learning how to master builds in Dota 2 after 3000 hours of practice) and your system/internet quality plays a larger role in fps games. If you have a 480hz monitor with 1000 fps in the game then you are already at an unfair advantage in the so called "E-Sport" , so it is not even a sport. It's like having children to wrestle with the world champions in the olympics.

I may sound like an unc but replaying old games like God of War on Ps2 or Gears of War on Xbox is a better choice in life than online gaming.

Kinda like a support group. Or life after quitting. Or just to be friends.

They do it with alcoholics anonymous and shit like that. So why not?

I watched a stream recently and it was my fav musician of years, called wisp. Playing games and seeing them be so casually social or loving felt brutal. Why can't we be casually loving and shit?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900725003685?via%3Dihub

TLDR: Any mentally engaging home hobbies that can replace 8-12 hour daily gaming sessions?

I'm 41, disabled, and have done basically nothing but gaming for my entire life. All of my friends moved away after high school and I've been alone ever since. I'm blind in one eye and have another disability that keeps me at home that I'd rather not talk about. My limbs all work though.

Gaming has been everything to me, but it's dying. Scumbag AI companies making hardware scarce and incredibly expensive, companies ending themselves with their braindead decisions... It's not going to collapse tomorrow, but it's coming faster than I expected, and one day, my hardware will break down and I won't be able to replace it.

I know this sub is supposed to be about voluntarily quitting gaming and fighting its "addiction", but I don't want to stop. It's all I've had to keep me sane. I'll likely be forced to quit one day when it's all gone. I've looked up hobbies during game droughts, but could never find anything that comes close to filling the void. Tried home brewing mead for a few years, but it's more of a set and forget thing. It's not enough to replace such a big core part of my life.

Any ex-gamers here have any advice for hobbies that can be done entirely at home? Something cave man friendly perhaps, because we won't be able to get PCs or possibly any electronics anymore at that point. XD

Thanks in advance for any useful info!

Has anyone here come to the point of realisation that they have to sacrifice something to gain something?

About a day ago, playstation announced they are going disc-less in 2028 and for its playstation subreddit, it was a meltdown. This means alot of us gamers who used to go to the game store to trade in their games for a discount, can no longer apply this. And with GTA6 on the horizon and prices start at 89.99, I think a lot us are prepared to not pay that price. Well for other games, its a no.

I recently started a new cybersecurity job and I'm surrounded by ethical hackers and I think I'm going to invest in this.

What are your thoughts?

8,000 hours in Counter-Strike. 2,800 in Rust. 4,000 in RuneScape. 2,000 in Minecraft. I added it up one night and it came to 16,800 hours — about 8 years of a full-time job, or 700 entire days of my life.

I tried quitting cold turkey more times than I can count. Uninstall everything, delete accounts, feel great for four days. Then the evenings got unbearably empty and I'd reinstall, telling myself it was just for one match.

What finally changed things wasn't more willpower. It was sitting down and being honest about what the games were actually doing for me:

Progression I could see. Ranks, levels, XP bars. Every session, a number went up. Real life doesn't have XP bars — you can study for a month and feel like nothing happened.

A reason to show up. My friends were online at 8. The party was waiting. Skipping felt like letting people down.

Zero friction to start. Double-click the icon and I'm in. Compare that to the gym: pack a bag, get dressed, travel, negotiate with myself the whole way.

Quitting didn't remove those needs. It just left them starving. That's why cold turkey kept failing — I was deleting the supply without touching the demand.

So instead of just removing games, I rebuilt the same three things around real life:

I gave myself visible numbers again. A day counter for days without gaming — watching it climb triggers the exact same "don't break the streak" instinct that kept me logging in daily for login rewards. And a weekly hours count for gym, studying, job applications. The grind mindset didn't go away. I just pointed it at something real.

I replaced the party. A few friends and I share our numbers with each other — who trained, who studied, how many hours this week. Someone is still "online" expecting me to show up. It's the accountability of the 8pm lobby, without the lobby.

I removed the friction from the good stuff, since I couldn't add friction to games forever. My gym sessions start tracking automatically when I arrive at the gym, so going feels like it "counts" the way a ranked match counted.

I'm around 16 months out now. I won't pretend I never think about it — a new season drops and I feel the pull. But the counter is at a number I don't want to reset, and that's held me through every urge so far.

If you're stuck in the quit–reinstall loop, my honest advice: stop asking "how do I stop playing" and start asking "what was playing giving me, and where else can I get it." That question did more for me than every uninstall combined.

Happy to go into detail on any of it.

My boyfriend left me because of his Pro Clubs team. After a fight with his teammates, he told me he was too upset about it to be in a relationship right now. I can’t wrap my head around choosing a gaming team over a real-life relationship.
Has anyone experienced something like this? Is this a sign of gaming addiction or unhealthy priorities? Or does it simply mean I wasn’t the person he truly wanted to be with?

I haven't gamed in 4 months, but the recent Sony annoucement of the discontinuation of physical discs for gaming is a sad one. Future generations of console games will never be "owned" merely leased, at the mercy of licensing. Makes me not want to play anything Sony or PS6 in future

I need advice. I’m a female and I’m 25 years old. I’m dating a guy who is 30 years old. This guy plays video games from 12 noon until 1 o’clock in the morning and doesn’t get up to do anything but make a hookah which he smokes 6 to 7 times per day and cook a meal. If I ask him to go out with me anywhere he always tells me that there’s nothing to do outside and if I do get him to go somewhere, he rushes me back home and I am extremely exhausted from this. Can someone give me some advice? I also should say that we’ve been together for two years and we share a one year-old together. We’ve been living together almost 2 years as well he’s been a gamer before me but I discussed my issues with him and he just brushes them off .

It has been more than 2 weeks since I have stopped gaming and now it feels like my brain is trying to trick me. Like yesterday I had this thought to download cod black ops and play...this thought came out of nowhere and a little scary part was that there was no resistance, if I was not aware I would have installed it. After that I was having thoughts about playing some old games like project IGI. I am 27 and no where near where I want to be in life there is this girl I want to mary everything depends on me having a direction in life gaming sucks that away in a snap.

If I start gaming it is never for an hour it always takes me back into the rabbit hole, at this point I have had too many experiences like that and it is awlays the same. I know I can't game, not anymore.

But navigating this is tricky this constant tricks that mind plays on itself....how do I get through this ?

My eating habits went from cooking everyday to ordering takeout everyday, went from no porn to full indulgence, went from cleaning regularly to piles of plates in the sink, overall my quality of life has gone down hill and fast. I understand gaming probably isn’t the problem it’s something with my mental because I can’t regulate it I understand others can but I guess I’m just someone who needs every edge they can get to be at a standard baseline

I am a (21M) who is addicted to gambling. I started gambling about 5 years ago when i was 16. My friend introduced me to roulette and i lost about 5 euros which kinda hurt me but still, i tried something new. As the time went by i started putting in 10-20 euros and when i won 50 i was on top of the world. That was huge amount of money at that time. When i turned 18 i opened up online accounts and started betting there. I won some and lost some but still, i didnt believe it was that serious. My first big loss came im January 2025. I won like 1500 euros from parlays and slots, i went on a holiday with my friends and i lost all that money plus smth additional that my parents sent me. Last summer i did some unpredictable things that i couldnt believe i was capable of. One night i stole 1500 euros( too) from my dads wallet, went to a betting shop at 4 in the morning and almost lost it all, i was down on last 200 euros and started thinking where to find money to repay him, fortunately i won and got back to 1500 and gave him that money back, which he realized and punished me for it. It was arguably the worst thing i have ever done. But i didnt learn the lesson. From that moment until today, i kept on and on, loss after loss after loss, still, i couldnt stop and only made it worse. The worst part happened yesterday. I earned my first paycheck, i made plans for the weekend and how to spent that money and in 3 hours i lost it all. Every single cent. I used my uncle as a scapegoat and he sent me 500 euros which i also gambled away and made it worse. I told my parents which made my mom crying and my dad heavily disappointed. I let down my family and my friends, but the worst part is i let down myself. I am not in debt to anybody, i just feel like my life is crashing down at the moment. I havent worked for 2 days and i feel terrible. But still, even after all of this, i think there is light at the end of the tunnel. I saw a lot of stories on Reddit and i believe that there i am more than what you see behind the eye. My story doesnt end here, this is just a start, start of a mental and physical rebuid.

Moral of the story is, when you feel like its all crashing down at the same time its not, trust me. It is just in your head. Whatever bothers you go talk to somebody, socialize because if those people that you talk to love you, they will find space in their heart to listen to you and understand you. Stay down until you come up, because your time will
come, just be patient, and stay true to yourself.

I am 20 (F) and have recently quit my addiction to gaming cold turkey 3 days ago. The thing is,, I’ve been playing for probably a little less than a year. I was pretty good about playing with moderation for the first part like 1-2 hours a day after work (I work full time as a CCMA). But for the past couple of months my addiction got pretty bad. I only played one game (Valorant) and i wasn’t even that good (peak gold 1) but for some reason i had a blast playing and would just be able to stay on for hours and hours. It got to a point where i completely messed up my sleep schedule, started to cancel plans with friends just to play, threw away my ministry in church and performance at work was plummeting. I would do all this knowing deep down this was a waste of time and I have no actual benefit playing this game. None of my irls play (super uncommon in the Slavic community especially for girls). And honestly i think it got to a point where i was just playing for the attention i got from men on that game which is very unhealthy for me and the type of person i am. I sat with my parents and had a long talk with them about my problem which led to me just packing my laptop and hiding it away. I signed up for the gym and started going with my brothers and i feel good, but there is just always a pit in my stomach in the moments where I’m not doing anything. When i scroll on social media and see content abt the game my heart sinks. I’m literally dreading the weekends because i know I’m not going to be busy and just going to be thinking of the game all day. It’s just wild because I’m reading a lot of these stories on this subreddit and there are people that have been gaming their whole lives and me probably 2 years in total (i played a bit in 2020 but then quit for 5 yrs) and theyre doing great after quitting. I’m gonna be honest i miss it a lot and it just feels like I’m trying to convince myself i don’t, like i literally don’t care it’s a waste of time i was having fun and it’s not like i was being an unemployed chud all day and playing i was actually doing things (i guess). Just wanting to know how i get this impending doom out of my life everytime i think about the game lol.

I’ve also never done this Reddit thing so sorry lol

Hello,

I met a nice girl yesterday because after work I did not go home where I would most likely play a game.

I went to a cafe where I did not play a game on my laptop but had a chat with a nice girl who gave me her phone number and email address.

But I have a feeling that I botched it up with overly-complicated messages (texting). And it's not likely we will meet again.

Nevertheless, I quit gaming today.

Hopefully, I will meet another nice girl who will like me.