A man in China hired virtual "assassins" to hunt down his son in online video games and kill off his avatar, according to local media.

The man, named by the Kotako East blog as Mr Feng, was concerned about the amount of time his 23-year-old unemployed son was spending online.

He hoped his actions would deter his son from playing the games, he is reported to have said.

His son eventually asked one of the gamers why they kept targeting him.

"It's not going to do much for family relations," Prof Mark Griffiths, a gambling and addictions expert at Nottingham Trent University 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 a symptom of an underlying problem."