Griefing

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It's lads like you that give war a bad name! Click to listen — The Demoman on griefers

”

Griefing is the act of using or abusing a game mechanic in ways originally unintended by the game's developers for the specific purpose of frustrating, angering, or otherwise negatively impacting the game experience of another player. Griefing can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint because its defining characteristic is intent and not action. An inexperienced player is not necessarily griefing unless their intention is to bother other players.

Griefing is different to cheating. Bug abuse and hacking can be griefing, but only when done specifically to disrupt another player's gameplay, and not when done simply to gain an unfair advantage.

Acts that do not constitute griefing

The following are normal behaviors in the game and should be considered as non-griefing strategies:

• Camping
• Turtling
• Ambushing
• Rooting out Spies, Engineers, or other classes hiding behind the team
• Killing the same player repeatedly in order to remove a tactical advantage gained by their presence from a defensive or exposed location

Acts that may be griefing

The following are considered griefing when they are done to disrupt someone's enjoyment of the game:

• Bug abuse
• Hacking
• Repeatedly stealing Teleports from slower or more vital classes
• Faking a trade deal that would be considered good
• Rejected Spawn
• Blocking a Sentry Gun's vision with other buildings
• Taunt spam
• Voice command spam

Acts that are almost always griefing

The following items are almost always considered griefing, because it is generally the only reason to do them:

• When a player mic spams through the voice chat system, with special sound effects or not, either to amuse some players or to irritate others
• Chat spam, with nonsensical or repetitive messages sent through the in-game text based chat system
• Offensive speech, text or sprays

 Medic

• Übering teammates for no reason, such as Übering a Sniper that is in no danger, Übering teammates in the spawn, etc

• Refusing to heal certain or all teammates

• Intentionally healing enemy Spies so that they are able to kill your teammates

• Intentionally ÜberCharging enemy Spies to protect them from damage

• Intentionally and repeatedly healing disguised friendly Spies in order to disrupt their cover

• Using the Meet the Medic taunt continuously while standing in the water to generate noise and annoy other players.

 Engineer

• Using Teleporters to trap your team-mates in inescapable locations

• Building Teleporters in between another Engineer's Sentry Gun and Dispenser, so that they cannot stand in the ideal spot without being teleported away (usually backwards)

• Deliberately placing Teleporters across vital exits and entryways so it is impossible to pass them without being teleported

• Placing Teleporters that lead to useless areas, or are just a few feet away from the entrance

• Building Teleporter exits in your own base and placing the entrance in the enemies', allowing for Spy infiltration

• Building Teleportes that lead to immediately dangerous areas such as in front of sentry guns.

• Building a Teleporter entrance/exit in the direct path of a Sniper's strafing route (such as the battlements in 2Fort) that go backwards and/or are counter-productive

• Setting up Sentry Guns and Dispensers in areas that the enemy cannot reach in order to irritate your teammates; for example, at the BLU team's setup/respawn area in Gravel Pit

• Deliberately spamming your Widowmaker or Short Circuit or continuously building and destroying buildings to empty other Engineer's Dispensers.

Other/Generic

• Intentionally pushing team-mates off ledges in order to kill them or force them to waste time getting back up

• Pushing teammates out of a Teleporter to make way for yourself, especially if you're a generally less important class. (e.g. a Sniper pushing a Medic out)

• Continuously obstructing a Sniper's view by standing in front of them or using special effects (e.g. Flamethrower/smoke from disguising) to obscure their vision.

• Repeatedly killing the same player, and only the same player, in order to annoy them with no tactical reason for doing so.

• Exploits, such as Skywalking in Dustbowl (Stage 3, Control Point 2) with the express idea to annoy/anger the enemy team.

• Intentionally being worthless to your team. For example, standing in the same place, only using melee weapons, running straight into enemy fire, or intentionally glitching into the reference pose.

• Attacking your own teammates for long stretches of time for no reason besides to annoy them.

• Following the same teammate around for no reason.

• Deliberately sending details to members of the enemy team of your team's defenses/weaknesses via private chat. This is also known as "Ghosting."

• Intentionally acting like a disguised Spy by avoiding spychecks and performing other suspicious actions.