Did you lose your job, destroy relationships with your family and friends?

Or did this merely replace 500 hours that would have been spent watching TV, Netflix or other types of entertainment?

The word addiction has a real meaning with some clinical ways for a trained person to diagnose somebody as having it.

I think of addiction more like alcoholism. Sure video games are engineered these days to be huge time sinks but that doesn't make it an addiction. If you can drop it (like you did) and it doesn't impact your life, its not an addiction.

I am self-employed (I actually run two small companies) and I sent some of my work days playing PUBG. Also I had less interaction with my kids and wife, and no other hobby really.

I looked at PUBG videos very often, sometimes live streams, at the office during the day.

I was thinking about PUBG all day long. It was bad.

Awesome that you're running two companies!

I was just pointing out there is a difference between an actual clinical addiction vs. a really bad habit.

I know the feeling about gaming and have been in similar shoes. I actually stop myself and check if I am doing something out of habit or because I want to... and have found I want to do other hobbies more, its just the inertia to get over the habitual actions that is the problem sometimes.

The point that you dispute is the term addiction. You mention an "habit" for instance. My point is: video games can REALLY be an addiction even for older people.

A useful statistic from 2016: US adults on average watch 5 hours of TV per day. Over 90 days (a few months) that's 450 hours.