New GTA, Red Dead Online Community Guidelines Outlaw Griefing

In order to "help ensure a positive gaming experience for everyone," Rockstar Games have released a new set of community guidelines to ensure the online experience for everyone is fair, respectful, and safe. The former statement was shared with the announcement of the new community guidelines on X. Notably, the new community guidelines outlaw griefing, which has been part of the Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online communities since their beginnings, sometimes leading to incredibly entertaining moments of revenge. 

This isn't the first step Rockstar Games has taken toward addressing griefing in their communities – in 2022 they released an update to Grand Theft Auto Online that sought to "reduce instances of griefing," ensuring the ratio was only affected by kills carried out during competitive gameplay. Griefing has also been a consistent topic of discussion since Red Dead Online's release, with players sharing their experiences on Reddit, Steam Communities, and social media to express their frustration and in some instances wish for some sort of penalty for griefers. 

The Rockstar website further elaborates on the sentiment shared in the X post, noting that "To ensure a positive gaming experience — including a welcoming, fun, and fair environment for our community — we encourage everyone to follow these basic guiding principles and to adhere to our Community Guidelines. 

Details on Rockstar's updated community guidelines and what behaviors and actions they're hoping to address can be seen following on the full website page, including their definition of griefing and what their fair play policy looks like, both of which can be seen below. 

Fair Play

Playing fairly is integral to an enjoyable experience for everyone. Cheating is disruptive and counter to the spirit of friendly competition at the heart of our online games, while griefing can ruin the fun by creating a negative environment for one or more players. Both behaviors can lead to the loss of player privileges. We define these behaviors as follows:

• Cheating: Gaining an unfair advantage by using cheats, exploits, hacks, or other third-party software. 
• Griefing: Intentionally annoying another player or interfering with their experience and progress by using the game in unintended ways (e.g., spawn killing, stream sniping, driving the wrong way in a Race with the intention to disrupt). 

The new community guidelines also outline general expectations of respect and encourage players to mentor newcomers and help others with missions and gameplay, making clear that bullying, harassment, and of course threats or attacks against a player's identity are strictly not allowed. The final topic for the community guidelines is safety, stating they "do not tolerate player behavior that can cause any degree of harm to other players, or that promotes real-world illegal activity." The specifics here include promotion of violence, discussing or enabling the sale of weapons, and more. 

What do you think of Rockstar's new community guidelines? Are you happy to see a hopeful end toward griefing in online communities? Let us know in the comments or on X!