Teabagging in
video games involves a player character rapidly and repeatedly crouching over the corpse of another player-controlled character as a form of humiliation or to provoke the other player. The practice likely originated from multiplayer communities in games such as
Quake or
Counter-Strike, and it became more prominent in later
first-person shooter games like
Halo: Combat Evolved. The use of teabagging is now widespread in
video game culture, although some gamers consider it to be an act of bad sportsmanship or harassment. The act courted much controversy across June and July 2022 when two professional female
Valorant players received suspensions by
Riot Games for criticizing people who had compared the act to
sexual assault. In addition to the suspensions, the players were also
doxxed. The suspensions caused outrage in much of the
Valorant and wider internet community, with various commentators calling the comparison to real-world sexual violence as "out of control" and "absurd". The player known as Dawn, who received a three-month suspension for voicing her opinion, said of the situation: "I have watched [sexual assault] happen in broad daylight. It is not something you can compare to crouching in a video game. I was visibly upset by this, as were hundreds of thousands of people, and replied under her thread expressing my frustrations and concerns." ==Controversy==