Chinese parents are in grave need of an age-rating system for online games to protect their children, according to a study report issued by the government news portal www.youth.cn on March 9.

The country still does not have a unified content-rating system for the online games industry, which relies on individual games developers to classify their own products into suitability-related groups.

Based on its own standard, the report found that 78.5 percent of the games should be restricted to adult players above 18, while only 2 percent were appropriate for children above 6.

However, about 80 percent of China's more than 564 million Internet users are minors, who definitely need more child- and teen-friendly games, according to the report.

China's online gaming industry took in revenue worth 24.84 billion yuan ($4 billion) in the first half of 2012.