There is a difference between "Being able to waste your entire lives on video games" and "Being forced to waste your entire lives on video games"... And it's not a black and white thing, it's a spectrum. More and more people are being essentially forced into virtual worlds because the real world is not giving them a chance to feel basic satisfaction.

If the odds of achieving your goals and leading a satisfying life in the real world approach 0% (e.g. because of hyper-capitalism and monopolistic, anti-competitive, centralizing market forces), then it's completely understandable that you'd want to escape into virtual worlds which give you the dopamine rush which your real life continuously fails to deliver.