Griefing

Griefing is the act of intentionally ruining other players' experience with a game, essentially trying to cause them grief. Seen in essentially all multiplayer games, especially those playable online, it entails a variety of acts aimed to deliberately agitate, make the game not fun, or make the game outright unplayable, for opponents and teammates alike. This includes the Super Smash Bros. series.

Methods of griefing

What exactly is considered griefing can vary from player to player, as a method of play that someone genuinely finds fun can be agitating for someone else, thus "griefing" them regardless of intent. Conversely, a player may intentionally try griefing but their opponent is unbothered, emboldened to play harder, or may even find the act of griefing amusing, rendering the griefing ineffectual.

That being said, common methods of griefing are as follows:

• Self-destructing repeatedly and using share stocks to deprive others on the team of their stocks.
• Constant use of team-damaging moves, such as many explosives, simply to damage teammates instead of the opponent.
• With team attack on, intentionally attacking teammates.
• Ganging up on another player in a free-for-all.
• Deliberately attacking one specific player and, once they're out, either acting friendly with others or making no attempt to battle with anyone else.
• Simply being useless, such as remaining idle or doing nothing but taunting.
• Continuously using loud taunts or taunts that get annoying with repetition (Such as Captain Falcon's down taunt or Ridley's up taunt) to throw off or annoy the players around them.
• Crouching repeatedly (commonly known as "teabagging").
• Choosing an abnormally large stage, such as Temple or a large Custom Stage, often in combination with a fast-moving character like Sonic or Fox, to constantly and safely run away from the opponent until the timer reaches zero.
• Abusing tactics that make themselves very difficult or outright impossible to hit at all, such as the Infinite Dimensional Cape with Meta Knight, shell hopping with Falco, and other such stalling tactics.
• Deliberately playing online with an awful internet connection to subject players to extremely laggy matches.
• Interfering with their own internet connection on purpose, such as by stressing their internet connection via extensive downloading and/or streaming while playing, applying tin foil to the router or rapidly moving the Nintendo Switch around if it's in Handheld mode, in order to create lag and throw off the opponent. Commonly known as "lag switching".
• Employing hacks to desynchronize online participants or play as an invincible character, such as Giga Bowser or Wario-Man.
• Repeatedly using Pokémon Change with the Pokémon Trainer in online play to lag the game (although this does not work as effectively in Ultimate, where the switch between Pokémon is much faster).
• In online play on Smash for Wii U, changing their name tag to something insulting or otherwise offensive, and optionally proceeding to play using the new name.
• In Ultimate, deliberately choosing a song in My Music that is considered to be obnoxiously terrible (such as 25m BGM), or plays no music at all (such as Gamer's eponymous song when played on an Omega or Battlefield form), to intentionally distract and annoy the opponent, especially if the player choosing the song cannot listen to it themself (such as when playing online with their ingame music turned off on their end, or listening to their own music with headphones instead of the ingame audio at a tournament). This can also extend to deliberately choosing a song that the player knows will cause copyright issues on YouTube and Twitch (such as Ring a Ding) when their match is being streamed by their opponent or at a tournament.
• Quickplay in Ultimate can be subjected to its own specific forms of griefing:
  • Purposefully disconnecting from an online match by closing the game when they're about to lose, so their opponent doesn't gain any GSP for beating them.
  • Intentionally tanking one's GSP so that they can then get matched with worse and more inexperienced players that reside in much lower GSP ranges.
  • Deliberately using nonsensical rules, like running three stocks with an abnormally short time limit and relying on either timing the opponent out or winning via Sudden Death. One can also run more casual-oriented rules, such as having items enabled and all stages available, with the intention of griefing competitive players, particularly in higher GSP ranges where such players largely reside, though it's ambiguous when players are running such rules with that intention or because they legitimately want to play with those rules.
  • In early versions of Ultimate, the Special Flag was an individually toggleable item for Quickplay. This resulted in griefers running rules that had only the Special Flag enabled, often in combination with Stamina, causing matches where eliminating the opponent's stocks was nigh-impossible and so guaranteeing every match going to time out, while radically changing the win condition of the match to become "who can get the most Special Flags". Version 3.1.0 would remove the option to toggle Special Flags in Quickplay to prevent this.
• In Ultimate, Battle Arenas are also susceptible to their own specific forms of griefing:
  • Going into Arenas with competitive rules and where the option for players to choose their own stages is enabled, then deliberately picking a non-competitive stage, especially one that enables circle camping.
  • Joining an Arena with a 2-player limit, and then deliberately staying in the Waiting Area or the Spectator Stands instead of entering the ring, forcing the Arena host to kick them so that someone else who will actually play can join. This can be attempted with larger Arenas to take up a spot, but as long as one other player is able to join, it doesn't completely prevent any matches from happening.
  • As the Arena host, kicking a person mid-match to force all players back to the arena. This can be extended to abusing their kicking powers in general, such as kicking someone right as they get into the ring after waiting a long time, or kicking people to bypass the queue to immediately get back into the ring after losing.
  • If enabled, playing loud sounds or music over the Voice Chat in Arenas to annoy players or cause voice chat lag, known as micspamming.
• Ultimate's Stage Builder can additionally be susceptible to its own forms of griefing, when posted via Shared Content:
  • Using offensive words, or slurs not already disallowed by Ultimate's Shared Content filters, in the name of one's stage or within the stage itself, or naming stages after inappropriate actions with the intent of causing shock or discomfort.
  • Creating stages that are sexually explicit or feature potentially sensitive content.
  • Creating stages that employ multiple moving parts or explosions and portals to cause a large distraction during a match.
  • Stages made to promote third party services or content that could be potentially harmful to use or see.
  • Using hacks or exploits to bypass the build limit set by the Stage Builder engine, and creating a stage with the purpose of causing the game to lag or crash.
• Reporting another player for no legitimate reason, or for simply losing to that player.
• When Miiverse was active, sending a player a friend request attached to an insulting message. In Ultimate, they can instead send a friend request over the Switch's friend system while changing their name to display as an insult or something else offensive.

In competitive play

Usual competitive play rules render more extreme versions of griefing unviable, if not outright impossible (such as any stage that would enable circle camping being banned, and banning any game-breaking glitches like the Freeze glitch), and in a "play to win" environment, where players are expected to do whatever they can within the rules to win, utilizing "cheap" tactics is generally more accepted than it would be in casual settings. Griefing in competitive play can still occur however, through actions that give the player no direct advantage ingame but can make their opponent play worse by annoying or angering them enough to mentally tilt them, or distracting them so that they drop a combo or misinput elsewhere, such as by frequently taunting ingame or being overtly vocal outside the game. Tournament organizers will generally not impose any rules on more mundane forms of griefing that are entirely ingame, such as the aforementioned taunting, but may specifically prohibit forms of griefing that more clearly make the tournament experience less pleasant for everyone and that are not already covered by the existing rules. For example, it is standard for tournaments to have a rule forbidding players from attempting to vocally or physically disrupt another player (such as by screaming or pushing when in a chain grab), and Supernova 2024 implemented a rule in Ultimate that prohibited players from choosing certain songs that are notorious for their griefing propensity.

Outside of competitive play, Griefing was especially common in Basic Brawl, as the combination of anonymity, complete lack of control over the match rules, free-for-alls being mandatory, and no restriction over stage and item selection, created conditions unfavorable for serious matches that were ripe for griefers to abuse. This is one of the main criticisms players had of Basic Brawl, as many found it unenjoyable for those choosing not to resort to griefing themselves.

Smash 4's griefing scene was far less rampant, but still was common in For Fun and For Glory, the latter of which was intended for serious matches. Unlike Brawl's Wi-Fi mode, which was entirely unmoderated, the system in Smash 4 allows the reporting of griefers, which can result in them being silently sent to For Glory Hell. Additionally, they could be blocked via the Wii U's built-in friend system, which would indefinitely prevent the player from matching with the blocked griefer in any online game until the player unblocked them.

Griefing persists in Ultimate, but its impact can be better mitigated, through the better reporting system, and with players being able to block anyone they play with, which will then prevent them from being matched together on Quickplay and prevent each other from joining their Battle Arenas for the duration of the block.