A Chinese police raid of a black market organ ring has revealed that an 18 year old boy recently sold a kidney to get out a debt brought along by video games.
Tencent via Kotaku is reporting that the raid carried out by Shijiazhuang police in the Hebei province of China revealed that the boy, known only as Zhang, sold a kidney to cover some sort of debt acquired through video game use. Whether he went into debt gambling on video games (either his own performance or eSports competitions), or if he went into debt buying video games is unknown. Either way, Zhang needed to obtain some cash to cover the $3,255 debt, and he decided that selling a kidney was the best option.
He sought out and found an organ dealer online, and that dealer traveled to Shijiazhuang to broker the deal. Zhang filled out paperwork as part of a pre-sale agreement, acknowledging that the decision to sell the kidney was his own, and then Zhang was brought into surgery. For his kidney, Zhang received $6,510. A black market kidney, according to Havocscope, retails for $47,000, meaning that Zhang probably should have asked for more money from his black market friends.
While it seems as though Zhang has more of a gambling problem rather than an addiction to video games, nonetheless this certainly is shocking news. Sadly, this is not the first time someone in China sold off part of their body to erase technology-induced debt. In 2011 a Chinese boy sold a kidney to buy the iPad 2, which blew up against Apple and continues to be a black eye for the company. While it remains to be seen how much this news will affect the video game industry in China and worldwide, no doubt somebody will jump on this news and use it to stir up anger at the video game industry.
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