To combat the raging addiction to online games that plagues China's urban youth, turning a generation of young people into the walking dead, seven entertainment portals took drastic measures in October to cut off the supply of the deadly online games. Disregarding their own profits, Shanda and six other online game providers instituted time limits: after three hours, level-grinding would have a reduced payoff, and after five hours, further play would be meaningless.

So have gamers been pulled back from the brink? Not really. In fact, a survey of web cafés in Tianjin indicated that the time limits have had little to no effect on online usage.

Online addicts, it turns out, do not spend all of their time playing games - they chat or watch movies some of the time - and even when they do play games, they can switch when their time runs out. It's quite likely they play games that are not among the restricted eleven.

The restrictions themselves are apparently quite easily bypassed, and in a final irony, the portals' controls may actually work to increase the spread of piracy as gamers move to other, unregistered servers that allow continuous play.