Can a game screw up your PC?

[Eichhörnchen]

I used to play this game, on my laptop, when it was still Windows8. It was the only computer I had that would play the game ("The Saboteur", appropriately). But it would crash... quite often... but not often enough to put me off loading right up again... because it was such a really good game. But it wasn't just your normal ctd... the pc would switch right off.

And then a couple of times, when it came back on, I got a message saying that the computer was "repairing" itself. "Not good", I thought... "Not good at all". The second time this happened the laptop just died and had to have a complete reinstall. I've never tried running that game since... I don't dare to because (despite what I've read) I believe that it damaged my computer. That laptop is Win10 now so probably wouldn't run it anymore... that's happened with a number of games but that's another story. Can a video game screw up your pc?