Should CSGO have a forgive option for killing teammates?

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s anti-griefing measures were put in place for good reason, but shouldn’t the victim be given a say?

Under CSGO’s current rules, any player who exceeds a certain amount of team damage instances or team kills is automatically booted from the server. None of the affected players, including the victim, can prevent this automated kick. Giving players the opportunity to forgive their killer might help make CSGO a less toxic community.

Under the current ruleset, a player can get banned for team damage in several ways. The most straightforward is killing teammates three times. CSGO players can also get kicked for exceeding 400 damage dealt to friendlies. That may seem like a lot, but a single terrible grenade can get a player halfway to the total. A large amount of team damage at the start of a round can also trigger a kick. If the pro match below took place on Valve servers, Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom would have been struck with a temporary matchmaking ban.

So why can’t CSGO players “forgive” the person facing the kick? It’s easy to imagine different ways that this could be approached, including an automated votekick instead of an instant ejection. Even if teams don’t choose to give someone a mulligan, real victims can get the satisfaction of condemning a griefer personally.

A teamkill forgiveness option in CSGO would also come with a few problems. A pair of griefers could endlessly kill each other over and over with no recourse from the other players. Allowing the four other players to all vote could also result in a tie. Still, the potential benefits of a more empathetic CSGO community might be worth the trouble.

CSGO team killing rules and penalties

There are three ways to trigger an automatic kick from Valve servers in CSGO.

• Deal 80 or more team damage at the start of a round
• Accumulate 400 team damage across rounds
• Kill three teammates

The rules that Valve implements of their own matchmaking service can differ from rules on community servers or third-party matchmaking services. In professional CSGO matches, there are no rules against team killing or dealing team damage.