In 2012, a Chinese father reached his breaking point. His 23-year-old son Xiao Feng had been gaming obsessively since high school, his grades had tanked, and he still hadn't landed a job after graduation. Traditional interventions—lectures, ultimatums, pleading—had all failed. So Mr. Feng decided to fight fire with fire, or more accurately, to fight pixels with pixels.

He hired virtual hitmen.

The In-Game Assassination Campaign

Mr. Feng tracked down high-level players in the online games his son frequented and paid them real money to do one thing: hunt down and kill Xiao Feng's avatar every single time he logged on. The father specifically chose players with superior skills and levels to ensure maximum griefing potential. Every gaming session became a nightmare of spawn camping and repeated deaths.

The plan was simple—make gaming so frustrating and unrewarding that his son would give up and finally look for work.

When the Assassins Cracked

But there was a flaw in Mr. Feng's strategy: human curiosity. After being relentlessly targeted session after session, Xiao Feng started asking his killers why they kept hunting him specifically. The hired assassins, perhaps feeling guilty or just confused by the persistent questioning, eventually revealed the truth—his own father was bankrolling the virtual hit squad.

The confrontation that followed didn't go as Mr. Feng had hoped. Rather than expressing gratitude for the tough love, Xiao Feng was defiant: "I can play or I can not play, it doesn't bother me. I'm not looking for any job—I want to take some time to find one that suits me."

A Desperate Measure in the Gaming Addiction Crisis

Professor Mark Griffiths, a gambling and addictions expert at Nottingham Trent University, told the BBC he'd never heard of family members going to such drastic measures in his 25 years of experience. He noted that some players he'd studied dedicated up to 14 hours a day to gaming.

The story, first reported by the Sanqing Daily and picked up by international media in early 2013, struck a nerve. It highlighted the lengths to which concerned parents might go when confronting gaming addiction—and the generational divide in understanding both the appeal of online worlds and how to address problematic gaming behavior.

Whether the virtual assassination campaign ultimately worked remains unclear from reports. But it certainly demonstrated that when it comes to parenting in the digital age, sometimes the most creative solutions are also the most hilariously misguided.

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