Father hires virtual assassins to 'kill' son in-game

A father in China hired online assassins to track down and 'kill' his son's characters in online games.

Kotaku reports that Mr Feng grew frustrated over the amount of time his 23-year-old, unemployed son was spending on games and decided to take matters into his own hands.

Mr Feng hired high-level players in different online games and sent them to assassinate his son's characters, hoping this would put him off gaming.

Upon discovering that he was being targeted the son confronted his father and told him that games aren't stopping him from getting a job, he just hasn't found anything that suits him yet.

Gambling and addictions expert at Nottingham Trent University, Professor Mark Griffiths, doesn't believe these hands-on approaches to game addiction work.

"It's not going to do much for family relations," he told the BBC. "I've never heard of that kind of intervention before, but I don't think these top-down approaches work.

"Most excessive game playing is usually the symptom of an underlying problem."

Mr Feng is said to be 'relieved' that his son could stop playing online games at any time. It's unclear whether he has called off the assassins of whether his son has found a job.