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WHO Gaming Disorder Listing a 'Moral Panic', Say Experts (bbc.com)
The decision to class gaming addiction as a mental health disorder was "premature" and based on a "moral panic," experts have said. From a report: The World Health Organization included "gaming disorder" in the latest version of its disease classification manual. But biological psychology lecturer Dr Peter Etchells said the move risked "pathologising" a behaviour that was harmless for most people. The WHO said it had reviewed available evidence before including it. It added that the views reflected a "consensus of experts from different disciplines and geographical regions" and defined addiction as a pattern of persistent gaming behaviour so severe it "takes precedence over other life interests." Speaking at the Science Media Centre in London, experts said that while the decision was well intentioned, there was a lack of good quality scientific evidence about how to properly diagnose video game addiction.
So, I was involved with DSM-5 (you could look up my name but I'm not telling).
You're right that this could probably lumped in with gambling, because in terms of learning schedules they're very much the same (e.g., both have variable reinforcement schedules). Many games are essentially gambling.
The DSM (and ICD) to some extent tends to be horribly conservative though. Some of this is maybe well-founded, because of real concerns over overpathologizing, but some of it has to do with the scientific culture in formal institutions of psychiatry and clinical psychology, which tends to be focused on superficial aspects of behavioral patterns.
There's lots of aspects of this that are messed up, though. "Addiction" probably isn't quite the right word for either gambling or gaming problems though, because the neurobiological pathways are different from those involved in drug use problems. They're probably their own thing. There's a history of people in the field of behavioral sciences and out of the field making well-meaning models or metaphors, and then taking them very literally. E.g., there are some things about gambling and pathological gaming that are like drug addictions, and other things that are different, and other things that are probably more like compulsions. It can both be a problem and sort of like and sort of not like any of those things. People need to start being comfortable with any given behavioral phenomenon being its own thing, while having elements in common with other things.
It's pretty clear that some people do have gaming-related behavioral problems. Do you need a separate disorder for it in the DSM or ICD though? Maybe or maybe not, but I'm not sure that the answer to that question is entirely scientific. It's sort of scientific and sort of not. There are an quasi-infinite number of ways for someone to have mental illness, but we don't specifically label them all, for example.