No, the title isn’t wrong.

The first-person shooter multiplayer “culture” is one fraught with trash talk, hurled insults, accusations of one unfair tactic or another and all-around, bullet-in-the-brainpan insanity. That doesn’t mean that anything goes, though. There are just some things even the remarkably foul-mouthed and lax communities of some games simply will not tolerate, much less condone.

CAPS-HAX is one of the most common offenses, as well as one of the most annoying. Everyone has run into one of these before – that one kid that types in all-caps, like he’s shouting all the time. Sure, everyone enjoys a good celebratory “OWNED, BITCH! OWNED!” when they pull off that one-in-a-million snipe, but having to put up with it constantly is grating. Fortunately, sooner or later, these kids leave the habit off. This growth is usually preceded by getting a keen reminder of the unwritten rule of all multiplayer gaming: there’s always someone better than you.

Microphone spam is also common, particularly in team or squad-based games. Everyone’s had to deal with one of these too. These are the players that seem to never get enough of their own voice, constantly talking into the microphone even when there’s no need to do so. It can get worse in some games where the voice chat feature isn’t team specific, so the other guys hear the loudmouth too. Yet, as bad as this practice is, it is often considered worse for one of his own teammates to shoot the guy in the back and claim “friendly fire.” This is mostly because by that point, it isn’t at all “friendly.”

QQ-ing, also known as “rage quitting” is also frowned upon. It also makes sure the player is looked down upon. These are the folks that quit in the middle of a match or game, simply because they are losing and there is no feasible way to turn things around. For many games, quitting means it won’t be registered as a loss on their part, but as a disconnection. This is greatly annoying, not only for the guys who got robbed of their rightful victory, but also for the people left behind, who usually proceed to lose even worse than they did before they found themselves undermanned.

Don’t even start on the number of times when entire teams QQ.

One sketchy issue is camping. For a long time, sniping was the practice that was considered entirely legitimate in-game, but bad form for players. These days, it’s camping. Granted camping is a perfectly valid tactic – sit back and wait for the other guy to move into your kill zone. Depending on who else is playing, this can be seen as cowardly but valid or very rude and cowardly. It doesn’t help that the average FPS is designed so constant movement is kind of how most people get the hang of the game, so someone that stays still tends to get underestimated until it reveals it has a rocket launcher or something.