Former US Vice President Joe Biden has said video games teach players how to kill and that government needs to step in to further regulate the industry.

In an interview with the New York Times, Biden said interactions with game developers during his time at the White House led him to see them as “righteous”, labelling them “creeps”.

“And you may recall, the criticism I got for meeting with the leaders in Silicon Valley, when I was trying to work out an agreement dealing with them protecting intellectual property for artists in the United States of America,” Biden told the New York Times. “And at one point, one of the little creeps sitting around that table, who was a multi- — close to a billionaire — who told me he was an artist because he was able to come up with games to teach you how to kill people.”

Biden is pushing for harder restrictions on games and has, in past, linked violent media with gun violence.

“Remember the Luddites smashing the machinery in the Midlands? That was their answer when the culture was changing,” Biden continued. “Same thing with television. Same thing before that with radio. Same thing, but this is gigantic. And it’s a responsibility of government to make sure it is not abused. Not abused. And so this is one of those areas where I think it’s being abused.”