Background

There was a recent post on r/VALORANT about whether it was appropriate for OP to have “inted” (intentionally thrown, trolled) a ranked game because her teammates were being misogynistic in voice chat. While I obviously abhor sexist behavior and initially agreed with most commenters that OP was justified in her actions, I do think the post brings up an interesting question: when is it ok to “int” a competitive game?

It feels morally just

Most people feel somewhere deep inside that trolling in this instance was not only justified but the morally right course of action. The sexist players needed to be “punished” by having their game ruined by the victim. But this logic can be applied to some unsavory cases. In League of Legends many traditional trolls legitimately argue that their teammates “don’t deserve to win”. Most players will have experienced a troll who sees a teammate die once and decide this teammate won’t “earn” the win so they start “inting” the game to ensure the teammate’s loss. This troll ruined the game to punish an apparent moral wrongdoing in their eyes. Is that ok?

Violence begets violence

To me this feels analogous to the question of when violence is appropriate. If somebody killed your family would you be justified in killing them back? I, and many others, say no though some disagree. Let’s say somebody insulted and disrespected your family; now are you justified in physically attacking them? Hopefully we all said no.

In both cases most people have at least some draw towards violence as a means to extracting justice. But violence can’t be the answer here otherwise we’d have to somehow define some threshold cutoff for how strong the feeling for justice must be before one can engage in violence. But defining some cutoff for an emotion is obviously never going to work so retaliatory violence cannot be a form of justice without accepting arbitrary violence.

Inting as violence

In competitive video games one might think of inting as a form of violence - some terrible act that ruins lives (games) and should not be tolerated. So back to our original gamer girl: was her inting an acceptable form of retaliation to misogyny? Well if we view inting as severely as we do violence then maybe not. Calling her actions just opens the door to arbitrary justified inting by others who feel slighted or otherwise morally wronged.

As much as my gut wants to side with OP here this analytical view tells me that we shouldn’t accept retaliation as a valid excuse for inting. The real solution here is for Riot, and games publishers in general, to introduce more robust moderation tools so misogynists, racists, trolls, and inters alike are all punished appropriately for actively ruining the experience for others.

So when you play games please be kind and respectful and don’t int, even when you think your teammates deserve it because next time somebody might think you deserve to be inted instead.