Gaming & Internet Culture · gaming

By Deimos EMK · Published Jun 14, 2026 · Updated Aug 27, 2026 · 5 min read · AI-drafted, source-checked

Via GIPHY (@ocdsetfree)

“I enjoy griefing other players in multiplayer games.”

via engadget.com

• StatusMainstream
• Typenoun
• First seen2000
• Categorygaming
• LaneGaming

See it in action

Video: What is griefing? #shorts, embedded from its original platform.

What it means

In its dominant current usage among US Gen Z gamers, griefing refers to deliberately annoying, disrupting, or trolling other players in a multiplayer video game in ways that fall outside intended gameplay. A griefer is a bad-faith player who derives pleasure from the act of causing frustration, making them a nuisance in online gaming communities.

The behavior is often accomplished by killing other players unnecessarily, destroying player-built structures, or stealing items.

Griefing tactics vary widely across genres and what might be considered griefing in one area of a game may even be an intended function or mechanic in another. In first-person shooters, griefers may intentionally fire on teammates, block doorways to trap players in spawn areas (as seen in Tom Clancy's The Division at launch), or camp corpses to repeatedly kill players as they respawn.

In sandbox games like Minecraft and Terraria, griefing commonly involves destroying or vandalizing other players' creations without permission, as well as spleefing, walling, and encasement.

Other methods include luring hostile mobs toward players (called 'training' because the line of pursuing monsters looks like a train), spamming chat, colluding with opponents, giving false information, going AFK to waste others' time, faking extreme incompetence, hiding with no tactical benefit, standing on top of important NPCs to block interaction, driving vehicles backward around lapped courses in racing games to crash head-on into the leader, illegally exiting a map's boundaries to prevent the enemy team from winning, and abusing reporting systems with mass reports to trigger automatic bans.

The anonymity of the internet enables griefers much as it enables trolls on websites, and griefers can usually lay claim to the troll title as well, combining disruptive gaming behavior with immature chatter and provocatively racist usernames.

Research has found significant correlations between enjoying griefing and antisocial personality traits including sadism, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, the 'dark tetrad.' Researchers found a significant correlation between those who flagged as sadists and those who claimed to enjoy trolling and expressed 'sadistic glee at the distress of others.'

In the culture of MMORPGs in Taiwan, such as Lineage, griefers are known as 'white-eyed', a metaphor meaning that their eyes have no pupils and so they look without seeing. Behaviors other than griefing that can cause players to be stigmatized as 'white-eyed' include cursing, cheating, stealing, or unreasonable killing. [1][2][3][4][5][6]

The receipt

Original post, embedded from Reddit, linked and credited. Visuals on this page are shown for commentary and identification.

The receipts

Documented, dated uses of “griefing” — each quote is verbatim from the linked source.

Every quote above passed the same verification gate this site publishes under: real source, real date, copied verbatim. See the editorial policy.

Where it started

First seen: 2000

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Why it's everywhere

Some groups have elevated griefing to a kind of performance art. Team Roomba gained attention for transforming the doldrum process of respawning in Team Fortress 2 into a quiz show, where right answers put players back on the battlefield, accidentally creating what was called the Online Multiplayer First Person Shooter and Trivia Game (OMFPSaTG).

This was considered far above simple team-killing and name calling, and their highlight reel was extremely NSFW due to foul language, blurry gay porn, and Legends of the Hidden Temple references.

Griefing has influenced game design heavily, forcing any game designer working today to consider the best way to deal with griefers. In the FPS genre and beyond, griefers have forced developers to come up with new spawning systems and new tools to allow players to police the game.

When developers of The Ship designed their game, they deliberately tried to solve complaints about existing multiplayer FPSs by creating a kill loop where every player was given the name of one other player to hunt, with security and needs mechanics to prevent camping and indiscriminate shooting.

Psychology research correlating griefing with antisocial personality traits including sadism has drawn broader attention to the behavior beyond gaming communities. A study found a significant correlation between those who flagged as sadists and those who claimed to enjoy trolling and expressed 'sadistic glee at the distress of others,' raising the question of whether griefing in MMOs reflects a sinister personality.

How it gets used

What counts as griefing can differ from game to game; an action considered griefing in one context may be an intended mechanic in another. Some players defend controversial behavior as simply playing the game as designed, while others see it as deliberate harassment.

• “I wish Jork would stop friggen griefing my guild mates everytime we log in and play.”A player complaining about repeated harassment targeting their guild across multiple play sessions.
• “Most kills in a single game held by me😃”Elemental_Ray's tweet after breaking a ramp and killing 48 players during a Fortnite ceasefire event, sparking accusations of griefing. He changed his display name to '#1 Record Holder' despite not winning the match.
• “Steve: Finished my house! (explosion, due to creepers) Herobrine: Griefed you!”A Minecraft scenario illustrating destruction of another player's creation, followed by the griefer being banned from the server.
• “He's a griefer.”A developer identifying a player who racked up a mammoth negative score and was ruining the game for everyone on the team, recognizing that the anonymity of the internet has a dark side.
• “There [were] like [six] guys breaking it down, he was just the one to break the last piece.”A Redditor on the Fortnite subreddit claiming to be one of the killed players, revealing that Elemental_Ray was one of several trying to take advantage of the sitting duck scenario.

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