Luu Vu Hai, director of the electronic information and broadcasting department of the Ministry of Information and Communication said the measures include temporarily stopping the licensing of online games, banning online game ads and cutting off internet access to shops providing online games from 11 pm to 6 am.

The measures will be applied until the end of this year, when the ministry is to issue a thorough plan to control online games, Hai said.

According to government figures 44 local and 35 foreign online game providers are active in Vietnam. Violent online games account for 77 per cent, gambling for 9 per cent and 14 per cent of the games involve football, dancing or racing.

The state-run newspaper Viet Nam News said a recent survey conducted by the education ministry showed between 70 and 76 per cent of primary school children played online games on weekdays in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. On the weekend, 100 per cent of the respondents said they played online games.

Tran Ngoc Huong, chief inspector of Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Information and Communication, said online games had a bad influence on players' health and school performance and caused crime when players ran out of money.

There has been a public and media outcry recently about the negative influence of online games after several murders by youngsters. In April, a 16-year-old schoolboy allegedly cut his grandfather's throat after he was refused money for online games.

Pham Quoc Ban, director of the Hanoi Department for Information and Communication, said there were too many different state agencies authorized to manage internet shops and the lack of coherent co-operation had led to an absence of strict rules, appropriate punishments and technical methods to control illegal games.

Deutsche Presse Agentur - July 29, 2010