Well, the "big" difference is, that those destructive "things" are substantially impacting the health of their users, while a game, no matter how sophisticated,

Well, the "big" difference is, that those destructive "things" are substantially impacting the health of their users, while a game, no matter how sophisticated, rarely does (except for a few extreme examples). One might more draw the argument into the gambling direction. But I personally think that the addiction argument is highly problematic construct. For example we all remember the studies demonstrating that people are addicted to "the internet" or "mobile telephones". When the first animal was domesticated one probably could also have done a study into how they are conditioning human behavior, by requesting food, affection, play, etc. A lot of this seems context based.