The Chinese State News Channel has laid the blame for an increase in society’s woes squarely at the feet of online video games. A program aired called “Confession of a Murderer — Focus on Pornography and Violence in Online Games (Part Two),” reported on an inmate in a Beijing juvenile prison. He was serving a life sentenc for murders he committed to obtain virtual items for use in a popular online game.

The report claimed that up to eighty percent of the violent criminals in that prison had turned to their crimes as a direct result of online games. “He himself killed five people, and the reason he took the path to crime was addiction to violent online games,” the narrator was quoted as saying.

The documentary comes after others have pointed the finger at online gaming for interfering with children’s schoolwork, as well as also branding social networking sites as potentially harmful.

Chinese regulatory bodies have prevented dozens of online games designed overseas being played in the country. They have also ordered developers to stop including what they described as “lowbrow content” in their games. These struggles saw World of Warcraft offline for three months alone this year.