Board Game Arena

Wiktionary wrote:grief (v.), “(online gaming) To deliberately harass and annoy or cause grief to other players of a game in order to interfere with their enjoyment of it; especially, to do this as one’s primary activity in the game, and especially by exploiting game mechanics without using cheats to do so, often through acts of destruction or vandalism.“

Now, they mentioned,

ath5063 wrote: ↑21 January 2026, 03:07 abusing game mechanics to ruin the normal flow of gameplay like purposefully losing but not quitting/coneding/etc..

Which honestly could be anything. Assuming they somehow read the mind of their opponent and know that the opponent is “purposefully losing”, then that sounds like it could be “tak[ing] an unnecessary and unreasonable amount of time at the end of game in an obvious losing position”, which would be a violation of the code of conduct.

(Or it could just be an inept player who nevertheless wants to play to the end rather than concede. I mean, really, that’s the only concrete complaint here—that the opponent is losing and hasn’t conceded? In light of a certain 20+ page thread on conceding, I just have to laugh at this.)

Going back to my original point—there are in fact legitimate ways of reporting “griefing”, despite the fact that none of the options uses that word. There should be an option for CoC violation, no? Shouting into the wind and posting it here are two pointless things one could do instead.

I’ve looked through ath5063’s history and am pretty sure I’ve identified the person being referred to. In which case I withdraw my suggestion that they might be merely inept. It’s actually pretty impressive what they accomplished, in a perverse sort of way. (It’s also worth noting yours was the only game they’ve ever done this in. They are not a habitual griefer by any means.)

However, they did not take an excessive amount of time to do so, and it’s actually not entirely clear to me that any CoC violation occurred here. But you could still try and make that argument in the complaint page. Good luck, and don’t forget to give them a Red Thumb as well.

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑21 January 2026, 06:16 There should be an option for CoC violation, no?

No there is nothing specifically labeled that because the vast majority of things that fall in that category can be handled with red thumbs (which is what many of the options tell you). The reporting funnel tries to weed out whiny noise that will go away if you just red thumb someone and move on with your life. But if you're persistent, you can figure out a category to cram it into.

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑21 January 2026, 06:30 But you could still try and make that argument in the complaint page.

Why encourage wasting mods time with this?

Ah, that makes sense. (Can you tell I’ve never reported anyone and don’t know what the process is? I’d go explore it but I’m afraid I’d accidentally report somebody for no good reason.)

BarnardsStar wrote: ↑21 January 2026, 06:39 Ah, that makes sense. (Can you tell I’ve never reported anyone and don’t know what the process is? I’d go explore it but I’m afraid I’d accidentally report somebody for no good reason.)

There is no way to accidentally submit it, because when you get to a place you have to fill in information it's not just a question of clicking a button. Reporting someone should require work, because that also weeds out specious claims.

Please address any issues about a table or a player using the proper channels.

There absolutely is a category for griefing:

[User] ruined a game by playing randomly...

When you choose this item, it tells you:

We totally understand that this behavor is painful, especially in cooperative games.

However, we cannot force players to play in a given manner, as long as they follow the rules.

We also cannot force a player to play faster: if you are in this situation, you should select a faster time option before starting your game.

This is why in this situation, you should give this player a Red Thumb instead of reporting him / her to moderators.

I suspect this is to prevent countless reports where a player doesn't like the way another player plays. If you truly believe it's nonsense play (and this more or less seems to be), then red thumb them. They're no longer your problem. Yes, they can go do it to someone else - who can also red thumb them.

Mod time is reasonably limited. Determining if behaviour is griefing or valid requires a reasonable understanding of the game (maybe even more than reasonable in some cases), so determining a verdict is likely to be more time consuming and probably highly subjective. I don't know the volume of reports they get, but I'm betting it's probably not minimal. Some problems are best solved by red thumbing and moving on.

What the heck does it mean to "grief" someone ??

FrankJones wrote: ↑21 January 2026, 14:33 What the heck does it mean to "grief" someone ??

Similar to trolling but a term mainly used in video games - doing actions mainly to impair someone else's enjoyment of the game or otherwise annoy or troll people.