Another Top 10 D*CK MOVES While Playing Video Games

#10: Teammate Blaming

Was your performance not up to snuff? Did the other team just wipe the floor with you? Now what? Admit that they were better players and move on with your life? No, you blame your stupid, incompetent, noob teammates of course! How dare they play with the likes of you!? The people that constantly blame their teammates are some of the most annoying gamers you can come across, as not only do they sound childish, but whining accomplishes literally nothing. Believe it or not, yelling at your team won’t motivate them to play better (in fact, it will do the complete opposite), and you look like a doofus who takes the game too seriously. Just leave your poor teammates alone.

#9: Scamming Others During Online Trades

Scamming is one of the most reprehensible and selfish things you can ever do online. Just don’t do it. Ever. While you may think that you look like a super cool thief from “Ocean’s Eleven,” you’re really just a bully. Scamming in games, particually MMORPG’s can take a variety of forms, including stealing others’ money, details, or in-game items, among others. Trading with other players takes a significant amount of trust, and by constantly breaking that trust, these scammers are ruining the experience for everyone else and giving themselves a bad name while they’re at it. Remember, it’s best to just stay clear of the deals too good to be true, because they always are.

#8: Going Rogue

Look, we know that doing the whole lone wolf thing is kinda cool and badass, and for some casual games, like “Call of Duty,” that’s fairly acceptable. But for team-based, tactical games, please don’t be the guy who runs off by himself. We’ve all seen Leeroy Jenkins, and we all know how well that turned out. While you may get the odd John Rambo who takes on an entire military squad by himself surrounded by explosions while standing on ten-foot high pile of bodies, most of the time you’ll end up with a doofus shooting at the sky and getting himself killed within seconds. In other words, please stick with your team. It’s in everyone’s best interests, including yours.

#7: False Reporting

The reporting function is there for a good reason: it allows genuinely hurt or offended gamers to report genuinely rude, disrespectful, and unwelcoming players. It’s not there for you to report some random player for beating you at a game of “Halo.” This is especially prevalent and troublesome with Xbox’s reputation warning system, where enough negative feedback can leave you with various debilitating roadblocks, like muting your microphone or limiting your matchmaking potential. Luckily, Microsoft thought of this and has an algorithm in place to spot potentially false reports, but the point still stands: don’t do it in the first place.

#6: Sabotaging Vehicles

Sometimes a good vehicle fail can be hilarious, like accidentally up-ending the warthog everyone was riding in and throwing them all a hundred feet into the air. And then there’s the malicious ones who do it on purpose, and let us tell you, that is not cool. While killing everyone in a fiery mess may be fun with some friends, it is endlessly annoying when you’re trying to play the game for real and your teammate keeps intentionally driving everyone off a cliff, or crashes a loaded helicopter. Riding in a vehicle is an exercise in trust, and when you break that trust by riding us into the map’s abyss, we get very, very angry. And please stop honking.

#5: Camping

A “strategy” that is as old as gaming itself, camping is one of the all time classic (and worst) dick moves. We all have that friend, or we’ve all met that person online, who absolutely refuses to throw themselves into the fray, instead relying on staying in one spot and picking others off as they stumble by. While this may be a legitimate strategy if you’re sniping or guarding an objective, it is endlessly annoying when you can’t find anyone in a deathmatch because they’re all hiding in a corner somewhere. Face us like a man, you coward! At least there are those of you creative enough to troll and humiliate the campers. You guys are the real MVPs.

#4: Spawn Killing

And speaking of camping, location is a key factor here, and no location is more scummy than right next to the enemy spawn. If there’s one thing that quickly ruins everyone else’s time and mood in a multiplayer match, it’s the annoyance that is spawn killing. There’s nothing more infuriating than being killed, waiting ten or twenty seconds, then spawning with your back turned to another enemy who immediately shoots you through the face. For the entire game. Unlike camping, spawn killing can never be seen as a legitimate strategy; it is simply a nuisance and a pain, and everyone hates you if you do it.

#3: Singling Out/Harassing Other Gamers

Look, we’re all playing these games to have fun. Well, most of us are, anyway. So there’s nothing more inappropriate than taking the game too personally and singling out or harassing other gamers. Examples can include anything from only hunting one specific person on the team, harassing female players (you know who you are), directing rude comments at a certain individual during the game, leaving nasty messages in their inbox, or anything else that could be considered harassment if done in the real world. This goes beyond gaming and is just a dick move in general. In the words of Rodney King, “Can we all get along!?”

#2: Ninja Looting in Raids

Okay, well this one’s actually almost entirely out of date, but journey with us to a simpler time when games like World of Warcraft did not have built in systems that prevented you from being a dick. Ninja looting is when someone steals the loot that someone else has worked towards and rightfully earned – without consulting or asking the rest of the group. Yup, you’ve finally killed that boss, and the one piece of armor you’ve wanted for MONTHS has finally dropped, but OOPS, that healer you picked up in town decideds to yank it and disconnect from the game. What’s worse is that this dickery becomes a self-sustaining loop, as punishment for ninja looting is often rare, leaving others with the mindset of, “Well, if he can get away with it, so can I!” That’s how a few bad apples ruin the whole barrel, folks.

#1: Smurfing

For those of you who don’t know what smurfing is, we don’t know if we should be proud of you for not practicing it, or pity you because you’ve been a victim. For those unaware, smurfing is when a skilled and highly-ranked player creates a new account so they can be paired with less-experienced players in order to beat on them and score an easy victory. Like if an NFL player decided to join Pee-Wee football so he could score more touchdowns. This can be done for a variety of reasons, like trying new tactics without ruining your main account, but a lot of the time it’s just because you enjoy beating on the newbies because you have no soul. And yes, that’s why all those level 1 players seem like they’ve been playing the game for years. Chances are, they have been.