Now, this kind of seems like a no-brainer, but video games are supposed to be fun. That’s why they’re called games, after all. They’re to be played, enjoyed, and provide the perfect escapism from the high-pressure nature of our everyday lives. Well, not so much for the developers who slog their earthly souls into creating them. The stress of each Smash Bros. title Sakurai makes, for instance, ages him about thirty years. What do they get for their efforts? Insults and grammatically-questionable tirades on forums, mostly. Why are we like this? Because games are actually serious business for the players too, that’s why. We become fully invested in our favorite titles and franchises, and often very competitive in the process. The two classic examples of this are Mario Kart and Mario Party, completely family-friendly and accessible experiences that soon become friendship-destroying hatefests.
Online play is just the same. In team games, you can mock, deride, and talk smack about team members who aren’t carrying their weight, but in the end, you’re still usually stuck with them. Even worse, in one-on-one games like fighters, you’ve got nobody else to blame for your ineptitude. Whatever the scenario, though, it’s best to see the match/race/round through. That’s not only because it’s the mature thing to do, but also because some games are programmed to mess with you for rage quitting. Some, like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or For Honor, will give you a temporary ban from online play, while others, such as Animal Crossing and Persona 4 Arena, just outright troll you for doing so. Let’s take a look at some of these games.
30 TROLL: Persona 4 Arena - The Brand Of A Rage Quitter
Way back in the day, some cultures would brand criminals with a letter depicting the crime they’d been found guilty of. The intent was a physical punishment (which was as painful as it sounds), combined with a sort of criminal record written right there on somebody’s forehead, cheek, or wherever.
2012 fighter Persona 4 Arena takes this same approach with those who rage quit during matches. If your average match completion rate falls below a certain threshold, your in-game name will turn red, showing everyone you encounter online that you tend to get a little salty when losing.
29 TROLL: Animal Crossing Series - Guess Who’s Back, Back Again?
That’s right, friends. We weren’t going to get very far in this rundown without Mr. Resetti showing up, were we? Let’s just embrace that. Animal Crossing isn’t the first franchise that comes to mind when you think of rage quitting, true, but it does happen. What if you inadvertently get rid of a precious item, or let somebody with malicious intent into your town? You’d better believe the game gets shut down at times.
When it does, and you reload, you’re treated to the glorious furry face of Mr. Resetti. The character has become infamous for his long, tedious rants. Even if you’ve never played Animal Crossing, you might be familiar with him as an Assist Trophy in Smash Bros.
28 BAN: Rocket League - Try To Resist The Road Rage
Now, if there’s any game that really shouldn’t be taken super-seriously, it’d probably be Rocket League. After all, the whole thing revolves around ridiculousness: acrobatic, vehicular soccer. Still, Psyonix’s hit title has built itself quite the competitive scene, and you know what that means.
It means angry players trying to protect their reputation and stats in ranked mode, that’s what it means. No matter how badly matches are going, though, it really is best to stick around. By some title’s standards, Rocket League’s ban for rage quitting isn’t that bad (you’re shut out of ranked mode for 15 minutes), but it just doesn’t pay.
27 TROLL: ARMS - There Really Is No Arm In Finishing The Battle
At this point, of course, all developers know that if their game has an online component, people are going to lose and hate it. How to combat rage quitting? Well, we’re going to be looking at all kinds of different methods over the course of this rundown, but there’s a simple one that a lot of titles employ: make sure that shutting the game down counts as a loss.
Who quits out of game that they’re winning, after all? In the ranked mode of ARMS, as in many other titles, you’re going to get that loss whether you stick around or not. Another neat little touch is that the Nintendo Switch’s home button is disabled during online play.
26 TROLL: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Wait, You’re Not Supposed To Troll US!
So, yes. As we’ve previously reported, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s online is all kinds of shonky. Not just with regards to the connectivity itself, but with some questionable decisions about the modes themselves. Here’s the thing about the Battle Arena mode: you’re sometimes waiting for a long time for a match. You may also have zero interest in spectating other players’ games. You may ALSO have just taken a good beating.
Couple all of these factors with the worst thing of all: if the host leaves, the entire arena is instantly disbanded, even for players who happen to have been mid-match at the time. Everybody’s thrown back to the menus. Effectively, then, Smash Ultimate is trolling everyone in the lobby at once.
25 BAN: For Honor - There’s No Honor Here
Ubisoft’s For Honor has been one of the most intriguing releases of recent years. There was so much potential here. Heated PvP sword fights between Vikings, samurais, and knights, using a very visceral, fighter-style combat system? I was sold on this one from the get-go.
Sadly, Ubisoft couldn’t make the best use of the game’s potential. It was rife with connectivity issues, and a lack of balance between playable classes. In short, it was a rage- quit magnet. Connectivity and stability have certainly improved since, and the games also implemented something else to try and remedy rage quitting: a ten minute ban from matchmaking.
24 TROLL: Overwatch - My Precious XP!
As I say, the core purpose of video games is to entertain. It’s just a shame that the whole “it’s just a game” thing doesn’t console anybody, because we tend to get incredibly competitive and things soon escalate far beyond that. Overwatch players have certainly been guilty of this. The ever-vocal community have quite a reputation, so Overwatch includes a devious little mechanic to try and keep them in the game.
If your games played/games completed ratio falls too low, you’ll be slapped with the 75% less XP from matches rule for a specific time.
23 TROLL: Pokkén Tournament - My Fight Money!
As a fan of Pokkén Tournament, there’s one particular aspect of the game that I found far more entertaining than I was expecting to: the avatar customization feature. There’s a ridiculous amount of clothing, background and prop choices, and I spent far too long messing around with them all. The fact is, buying new gear for your player character is pretty well the only use of the in-game currency.
If that sort of thing’s a big deal to you, you’re gong to want to make sure that you don’t disconnect from matches. Why? Because rage quitting sees 200,000 coins taken from your total, as well as an auto-loss.
22 BAN: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Yep, I Find This Offensive
So many games, as we’ll see, implement a brief matchmaking ban following a disconnection; something around the 5- or 10-minute mark. In a lot of ways, this is probably a positive idea, not keeping players away for too long but ensuring that they have a moment to take stock and cool off before leaping back into the fray.
The issue is, sometimes these temporary bans are just a little too soft. We do want a deterrent, after all. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive takes that ball and runs it all the way to the end zone. Here, there are different “levels” of ban; some lasting for a half-hour (which is already harsher than most) and some lasting all the way up to a week!
21 TROLL: Smite - It’ll Spite You And Smite You
In a lot of games, you’ll find yourself in a familiar situation when you join matchmaking: you’ll be thrown into an in-progress game that isn’t full, and you’ll be losing badly. This often comes about, of course, because a member of the losing team bailed out.
Sometimes, this leaves you in a totally untenable position, and you’ll want to rage quit. Depending on the game, though, you really might not want to be too hasty with that. In Smite, the comeback factor is really strong, and you don’t want to count yourself out too early. Especially when considering the fact that you’ll get a deserter penalty of 2-30 minutes for your trouble.
20 TROLL: Street Fighter V: The Symbol Of A Rage Quitter
The thing about a lot of these rage quitting penalties is that the game can never be quite sure whether your disconnected on purpose. As such, it’s important not to leap straight down anybody’s throats for a first offense, because it may not have been intentional at all.
The games played/games completed ratio is a good way to determine these things, especially if you’re going to outright brand somebody as a quitter. Persona 4 Arena does this, and so does Street Fighter V. In the latter, you get the standard temporary ban, as well as losing some of those sweet, sweet league points. Along with this, you may receive that telltale skull icon on your profile.
19 BAN: Halo 5 Guardians - Guardians Of Honest Play
When it comes to talk of competitive play and the unfortunate attitudes it can give rise to, there’s one particular genre that tends to stand out: the FPS. This makes perfect sense, I suppose, after all, the crux of the whole thing is violently taking out your opponents with an arsenal of angry firearms.
As far as Microsoft are concerned, the biggest FPS franchise out there is Halo. The pioneer of the whole space-tastic shooter movement, Halo’s Bungie days are seen by some as the pinnacle of the genre. With all of this in mind, you’d better believe that the latest installment has anticipated rage quitters. Halo 5 Guardians, as we’ve reported previously, is another title that tries to fit the punishment to the crime (and the frequency of said crimes). Matchmaking bans can last from a full day to a full week!
18 TROLL: League Of Legends - That’s Not A Good Title, You Know
We’ve already touched on games that have a notorious tetchy community, but here comes one of the most infamous of all: League of Legends.
17 TROLL: Mortal Kombat X - Get (Back) Over Here, The Match Isn’t Done Yet!
Yep, I stretched that Scorpion quote way too far for the joke’s sake. The polite thing would’ve been not to dwell on that. Anyway, yes. As we’ve seen, a popular rage-quit-curbing tactic is to try and take away the main incentive for doing so: ensuring that a player can’t protect their win/loss ratio. If you disconnect, that match will register as a loss anyway. In that scenario, what do you have to lose?
Mortal Kombat X is another game that takes this route. Some players prize their win/loss ratio as much as they do their beloved K/D is shooters, but there’s no leaving to protect it here.
16 BAN: Super Smash Bros. Wii U - U Will Have To Wait A Little Bit
If any game defines that “don’t take it super seriously” concept, it’d be Smash Bros. After all, this is a series where Pikachu can run in to wang a bob-omb right at Wario’s mustache, only to comically trip over as they wind up for the throw. Wario takes advantage of their brief vulnerability to pass gas in the little rodent’s face, ruining their entire day.
Nevertheless, the previous entry’s For Glory mode encouraged super competitive play. Which in turn, led to players who wanted to defend their win ratio at all costs. In response, Nintendo implemented a ten-minute wait for matchmaking following a dropped connection.
15 TROLL: Marvel vs Capcom 3 - You Can’t Play Nicely? Neither Can They!
These bans are all well and good, but the biggest issue with them is that they’re just not consistent. As we’ve seen, some games will just leave you on a five-minute cooldown before you can hop back into matchmaking, while others will sometimes impose a whole week on you. This is partly why some games try different approaches.
Take Marvel vs Capcom 3, which includes a mechanic that is also employed elsewhere: rage quitters can eventually find themselves in severs with only over disconnectors for company. Remember Grand Theft Auto Online and its dunce’s cap thing?
14 TROLL: Rainbow 6 Siege - Not Any More, You Don’t
Rainbow 6 Siege launched with a bit of problem: it didn’t have much of a system in place to punish those who left games early. Granted, this is largely because ranked modes were implemented later, but still. Those who don’t like to lose saw their opportunity and pounced on it. Again and again.
When ranked games were added, this all changed. Ubisoft would give players the benefit of the doubt at first, but if they continued to mysteriously lose connection, it’d be a 15 minute wait for them. Not only this, but there was a second stage to the punishment: for a period, you won’t gain any renown (XP) in any mode, and your online rank would also take a hit.
13 BAN: Call Of Duty: Black Ops II - Consider This A Warning
If there’s any franchise that’s become a little notorious of late, I’d probably have to say that it’s Call of Duty. There are all kinds of factors to this, including the series’ outright popularity, the fact that they’re being thrust though the Call of Duty Game-o-Matic every year (like FIFA), and the perceived toxic nature of much of the playerbase…
The last one’s the most important here. For that reason, a super-serious-sounding probation system was put in place by the devs to keep disconnectors honest. It’s a familiar so-many-strikes-and-you’re-out sort of scenario.
12 TROLL: Paladins - Wait, Don’t I Know You?
Now, Paladins is really, really serious about the problem of rage quitting. There are a number of measures in place here, and they’re the kind of inspired things that other similar games could learn something from. For one thing, your standard-issue ban has been implemented, and the length of it will increase as you commit more infractions. Once you’re in a ranked match, you can’t quit (not even legitimately through the menus), so you’re there for the duration.
Over in casual matches, meanwhile, the true elegant trolling of Paladin’s system is revealed: if you leave a game and try to search for another, you’ll be put right back into the match you abandoned. Now that’s dastardly.
11 TROLL: Friday The 13th : The Game - Sending Jason To The Salt Mines
As we all know, salt, salty, and other sodium-based snark are terms often used to describe those who can’t handle losing. The developers of Friday The 13th: The Game got in on that fun themselves, by coming up with a solution to rage quitters that they deemed the Salt Mines. Early in the game’s life, it was common for people to instantly quit because they were stuck playing as a counsellor rather than Jason. Either that, or they’d leave because Jason had found them and they had no tools to escape.
In a game where the host leaving would end everybody, this was every possible kind of uncool. In March of last year, thankfully, the team announced that they’d be implementing separate servers for rage quitters. They put it as trollishly as possible, though, as per an official forum post at the time: