is it hard for a 28 year old to avoid videogames after becoming addicted to it?

For me as a Gamer, Video games are a big part of my life, I play them every day for about 4 to 5 hours, now this is time I've set aside for myself where I would otherwise be bored to death with nothing to do.

Gaming, can become an addiction if the game the person plays is designed in that way, such as leveling up and basically bettering your in game character or stats, people who play these games will play them for 8 to 10 hours a day, leaving no time for themselves to do anything else. I have a cousin who is only 10 years old who plays a game called Fortnite for as long as he can, his mom checks in on him and he has been found literally passed out on his bed with his head phones left on and the game still running. He has spent 400 dollars on this game on simple costumes and "V Bucks" I have told him many times that gaming is fun, but there comes a time when you should turn it off and spend time away from it. I didn't say it that properly though, since he's just a kid. But since I was his gateway into video games so to begin with I thought that I would have some sort of influence, I was always playing a game of some sort when I was a teenager and he was always interested in them whenever he was around and I let him play them, but that proved to be ineffective.

Unfortunately for him most games are now designed with addictive qualities. I grew up with the n64, where games were meant for simple fun with a single player mode, but games are now meant for making money through downloadable add on's for multiplayer, these games have no replay value when their console becomes obsolete and the online feature is shut down. However their addictive qualities are amplified by friends and social pressure.

With this new DLC feature, games are spending less time in development and then sold for full price and then the full game is sold later for a third of the initial cost. Most cases that's 20 dollars.

Unless you play Nintendo, a company devoted into making great games with lots of thought and effort put into them. It has always been their goal to make a full fledged game with few DLC, they never want to limit what a player can do unless the cost of it's development warrants it.

Quality over quantity.

You friend can over come that addiction, however he must want to. And the addiction towards the game, may be influencing him into continuing over bettering himself in a life changing way.

I myself also has a similar situation like your cousin, but I chose to work at gaming-related works (I currently works as a game operations). So why don't you ask him to also work in the game industry?

With his gaming knowledge, he could become a game operations like me, or other positions on gaming such as game designer, game reviewer, game tester, etc.

It's probably hard at first to persuade him to work, but it's worth to try, since it's also for his own good.