VGCulture - The griefing game

A griefer is a player in a multiplayer video game that deliberately irritates and harasses other players. -Wikipedia

Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/8/10/

So what game are the guys at Penny Arcade trying to show here?  League of Legends, the very successful free-to-play MOBA game by Riot Games inspired by DotA.  The first panel is of WuKong, and the 2nd is of Leona.  Griefing is a sadistic game enjoyed by the person harassing and bugging the other players (usually their own teammates) and can be applied to a number of multiplayer games.  Griefers can sometimes be just as bad as hackers because they affect the experience for everyone.

Source: Youtube Channel TEAMROOMBA

Yes, it's funny to laugh at the misfortune of others, but it's not as fun when the griefing is being done to you.  I think some of the worst ones I've heard about is people joining servers to games that require a lot of building and time and destroying everything that other people have built.  In First-Person shooters and such, players who bug you can either be banned or a player can leave if they want.  But games like DotA and League of Legends, you commit 20-60 minutes of playtime in order to finish one round which makes it all the more frustrating when someone is griefing you or the team.  People should respect each other in multiplayer online games, because without those people there would be no game to play.  Unfortunately, besides griefers, there's spammers, glitchers, hackers, smack-talkers and such to help ruin a game's experience, so that's only hopeful wishing.  The griefing game can only be fun for so long until you kill off an entire gaming community and get banned from every server in the world.  Anyways, the comic that Penny Arcade made was funny and true.  I don't recall getting griefed that much except this one time where a team mate in Modern Warfare 2 trapped me in a corner on purpose and was stuck for a good 10-20 seconds before we were both shot to death.