Many of the deaths are not caused by playing long hours
The article does have a rebuttal in its last paragraph where the last person that is talked about lost his job and played online for hours on end. He then committed sucide because of his own personal problems. This is an argument by example
A man named Hudson Wooley lost it all after playing the very popular (even before WOW) MMOPRG Everquest for several hours a day. Wooley was having difficult issues that caused him to become depressed and although the family blames Everquest for leading to his suicide people believe that it was his escape from reality, basically what alcoholics do except with elves and dwarfs. After losing his job and ignoring friends and family, they began to worry for him. After some time Wooley shot himself with a gun (spot not mentioned) not because of Everquest but from his problems, his suicide was his escape from reality just as many others escape playing MMOPRG’s such as Everquest, Warhammer, World of Warcraft, etc.