More serious, China will BAN video games that feature...

China will ban video games that feature gay relationships, 'effeminate males' or allow players the choice of being good or evil.

In August, China limited children to three hours a week of online gaming in what it said is an attempt to curb addiction.

The new memo gives a series of guidelines to game developers in China, or those developing for the Chinese market.

Under the new rules, characters must have a 'clear gender', and plots cannot have 'blurred moral boundaries'.

It adds: 'If regulators can't tell the character's gender immediately, the setting of the characters could be considered problematic and red flags raised.' 

'Games can't distort facts or deliberately provoke controversy, and historical figures with established narratives must not be refashioned,' the memo said.

On the issue of morality, the guidelines state that games that give players a choice between good and evil acts will also be censored. 'We don't think games should give players this choice,' the memo said. 'This must be altered.'

The announcement comes as Chinese censures announced that no new domestically produced games had been approved since July, while no games from abroad had been approved since June.

In a meeting in early September, the country's big game developers were told by Beijing censors of new strict regulations on gaming content.

This includes the ban on anything with the 'wrong value orientation', as well as pornography and violence in video games.