Do you know how much time, determination, money, and dedication it takes to be a gamer on Steam!? YOU PROBABLY DELETED HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! Of course he is going to be mad at you for deleting his passion, his money, and his valuable time spent doing the thing he loved most, and you wonder where he comes from when he got mad? You just erased a portion of his life. That’s like burning down a librarian’s library.

That’s like burning down a librarian’s library. That’s like shredding a lawyer’s case documents. He is a gamer, let him be happy gaming. And even if he chose to occupy the majority of his day playing video games, you could have done a very vast number of things to accomplish your goal without literally deleting his hard-earned money.

I’m gonna tell you something nobody else on Quora knows: I’m a hardcore gamer and play video games every day. And the reason I have thorough knowledge and information on various sciences and history is that I game. Playing a video game is no more of a time-sink than reading a novel, and it can be interesting to learn about the world around them through interactive games that have informational mechanics.

I learned circuitry from Minecraft. I know hundreds of plants, herbs, weeds, and trees from playing Skyrim and RDR2. I know the nutritional value of specific foods in the wilderness if I were to need to eat them. I have learned gravitational effects, kinetic energy, and inertia from simulators. I have learned more about World War II from COD than in any history class.

I have learned specific chemical reactions and how to trigger them with each substance. I have learned more from video games than from books, and that is a fact. Video games also innovate the player by releasing their imagination and letting them do things in-game without real-world consequences. It can be an escape from the horrors of daily life or an effective way to relax and enjoy yourself.

There have also been studies that show the majority of gamers thinking in a more intuitive fashion and having advanced teamwork skills from online gaming and strategy games. Your child is lucky to be a gamer but very unlucky to have his lifestyle changed because of another person’s opinions.

You ultimately ruined a super-hobby, which cost him more money than he could add up, and a major loss of his life that has been devoted to nothing now, because you made the decision to destroy his valuable digital library. If I were you, I would give him the lost money in cash and help him attempt to recover the account. This is the LEAST a decent parent would do, and I expect you to regain his trust and acceptance.