Since 2013 when the DSM-5 manual was published, numerous scholars around the world have developed new self-report instruments for measuring internet gaming disorder or later a gaming disorder. However, each of these instruments utilizes different operationalizations of its criteria, making the pursue for a unified gaming-related disorder measure difficult to achieve. The main aim of the study was to assess how well do the items of the currently applied screening instruments operationalize the criteria as proposed in the diagnostic manuals. The article presents a semantic content validity review of the English items employed by 17 instruments that claim to measure either internet gaming disorder (DSM-5) or gaming disorder (ICD-11) by their official criteria. In all but one instrument the operationalizations of items did not fully adhere to the criteria as stated in the manuals. Besides providing examples and explanations of (non)adherence of items to the diagnostic manuals, the article presents new practical recommendations that researchers studying (internet) gaming disorder could take into account in order to improve the content validity of their survey instruments. The field of gaming disorder could greatly benefit from a more unified approach to measurement.