Readers and authors confuse "realism" in fantasy and Sci-Fi books as just adding "fake drama", blood and gore violence, or worse, human depravity, corruption, lawlessness or criminal activities (sexual assaults, slavery, human trafficking, assassination, etc.) Realism, to me (in fictional stories) refers to having the story and the events of the story, to be rational, logical and have common sense.
For example, a game cabin, in this post-apocalyptic world would not stop an insect or worse from spreading the undead-plague. If the plague is airborne, only living in a bubble would save you temporarily, and yet, the main character does not disinfect his food, the cans, the bags, nothing, spends his lasts hours in a zombie-filled-dystopian-earth playing in a virtual reality game. Not saving real people, not trying to find a cure, not trying to improve his living conditions, etc. but playing a game...(alone)...
The story felt too much like I am Legend, without really trying to "save humanity", much less live until next month...So, what could be the point to the last minutes, last hours of a person that "rather than face the extinction of humanity, escapes to an immersive virtual reality game"??? I mean the main character should be trying to grow his own food (hydroponics), should be obsessed about getting clean air, cleaning the "microbes" around him and especially around his food...
Unless the main character can hack the domain name company, or a bigger company like Google, etc. that registers domain names, he will not be able to create a web address with a unique domain name (for starters)...The main character hacks Apple to download a lot of music from Itunes...this is just too irrational, infantile and nonsensical to believe...
Where I'm going with this, is that this story is sub-par and could have been a lot better...Should have been a lot better. There are too many plot holes, theme sieves to really enjoy and be entertained by this urban-fantasy-zombie-post-dystopian-hell...