Rage Quit

Rage Quitting: Feudal Japanese edition.

Gabe: What am I supposed to do?
Tycho: What every Dungeon Master has done, ever, for all time.
Gabe: Persevere?
Tycho: Shit no. Quit in a huff.

—Penny Arcade: The Things We Do For Love

A character is playing a game (usually with other people or online) and quite simply, they're losing. Maybe they Did Not Do the Research on how to effectively play the game, maybe they're off their A-game, maybe it's their teammates, or perhaps the other guy just found a way to break their supposedly impenetrable defense. Whatever the reason, their armies are dying, their buildings are burning, their avatar has been sliced into six different pieces and they are about to get this loss added to their permanent gaming record. If they had a winning streak or an undefeated season, it's about to end now.

Enter the Rage Quit: If they can't win this game, no one can! Screw going down with the ship and using the loss as a learning experience; someone is about to put the first black mark on their untarnished gaming record, truly a Fate Worse Than Death! Alternately, it need not even be an actual loss or a bad game, some players have ragequit over the most trivial of matters such as their favorite map not being selected, or their favorite character being used by someone else. In any case, if they can't have it, then no one will!

As you can well imagine, this is obviously incredibly annoying to the opponents; players who ragequit too often tend to look weak, and it pisses off other players who often just want to get through a game without the other guy backing out on them at the last minute because they don't want to get stuck with a loss. Rage quitting is also common in people who simply get frustrated at the game and quit early to cool off, whether it be from several streaks of bad luck or results in a game simply not working out in their favor, despite everything they've been doing. Of course, quitting is still quitting, which greatly annoy other players who want to finish the game or earn the win.

In some very rare instances, the rage-quit may not in fact be due to the player sucking or getting frustrated. Rather it's punishment for allies of the player who are in some way abusing game mechanics or items to make the player's experience miserable. As vengeance, the player abandons their team at the worst possible moment.

Measures to alleviate this vary. Some games will register a rage-quit as an automatic loss to the player who quit (possibly with an automatic win for everyone else), or even keep a separate tally for the number of "disconnects". Unfortunately, it is impossible for the network to distinguish a ragequit from actual technical problems (a power outage, for example), and there are usually still ways for players to exploit the ranking system to avoid taking the loss.

Can be spelled both "rage quit" or "ragequit". As the page illustration shows, ragequitting is Older Than They Think.

Compare Save Scumming, a mostly single-player phenomenon that may not entirely be caused by RAGE at losing. Can also mix with Jerkass/Griefer where people may quit the game, in addition to losing, exclusively to piss off other people. People who quit may literally say Screw This, I'm Outta Here.

See also Fake Difficulty, Nintendo Hard, That One Boss, That One Puzzle, That One Level, Flipping the Table.

No real life examples, please; this page is for In-Universe and Invoked examples only. If we had examples such as "{Insert Game Here} is prone to ragequitters", you might as well add every game in existence to this list, and that would be unnecessary. For your personal experiences with Ragequitting, take it to the discussion page.

Examples of Rage Quit include:

Anime & Manga

Comics

  • Brian of Knights of the Dinner Table is king of the trope. If he doesn't like B.A.'s call, if someone accuses him of cheating or reminds him that his imaginary girlfriend wasn't real, he'll flip the whole table over. Other characters have been known to storm off in anger, but never with quite the panache Brian uses.


Film

  • Briefly seen on Beauty and the Beast, during "Gaston". Gaston, as white, plays a game of chess, and is down to just his king and two pawns. Black, who still has all of his non-pawn pieces, makes a move; Gaston realizes he's screwed, and in a fit of rage, smacks the board across the room (into the camera). Just in case you hadn't yet figured out from his Establishing Character Moment that he's an anti-intellectual.
  • In Jason X, two guys playing a holographic video game have their characters (controlled mentally) killed by Jason, so they quit in frustration. It doesn't take a genius to realize how events played out after that.
  • A bar brawl version of this happens in the first scene of Way of the Gun, as pointed out by the director in the commentary. The two antiheroes square off against an angry man and a number of his friends. Heavily outnumbered, they realize that they're going to get beaten up anyway, so they throw their first punch at the guy's girlfriend, spoiling his victory.

Fine Art


Literature


Live Action TV

  • In the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Peak Performance", Data has a rematch against an opponent who defeated him earlier at a game of Stratagema. Data decides to play for a stalling tactic, denying himself winning moves to prevent those of his opponent (as playing to win last time got him trounced). Said opponent eventually rage quits.
  • On a Celebrity Edition of Wheel of Fortune in November 1997, William Shatner got mad because he was in last place after the second round. He rage-quit and Julie Pinson came in to play the rest of the game for him.
  • An episode of According to Jim, Andy turns off the video game before he can lose to Gracie.
  • Arguably justified in the US Season 15 of The Amazing Race. One team was eliminated at the starting line, and they were so mad they just up and left and didn't even attend the finale. The part where people were sympathetic to them was that they didn't even get to leave the country, or even go through the first leg of the race. One fan compared it to qualifying for the olympics and being eliminated during the opening ceremony.
    • Nick of Nick and Vicki got mad and quit in the middle of a task in Season 17. It Got Worse when the episode in question turned out to be a non-elimination, which meant that the audience had to suffer their presence for another episode.
  • Lisi in the American Survivor Rage Quit too, but instead of just walking out and leaving, simply asked everyone to vote her out.
  • In Season 3 of Top Shot, Blue Team member Jake quit after being voted into an elimination challenge, but before actually participating in said challenge. The other person getting the votes, Phil, didn't win the elimination challenge by default, though; instead, he had to compete against the last person eliminated (Mike Hughes). Mike won, and made it all the way to the final challenge that season.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Chardee Macdennis": The game board has to be nailed down, as Mac inevitably becomes enraged over the course of the game and tries to end it by throwing the board. For extra humor, it is in fact Mac who nails the board down while explaining to newcomer Frank that he will forget about it and try to flip the board over later (he does).
  • In the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, Cavil blurts an expletive and kills himself when the means of immortality are taken from his grasp.
  • Discussed on Leverage when Hardison is running a con he designed based on video game principles. Turns out he may have made the whole thing too complicated and didn't account for this possible reaction.


Professional Wrestling

  • Name a Heel who is not a Monster Heel. They will almost certainly have done it at some point in their career, ESPECIALLY if they hold a title belt. Whether it's a blatant kick to the opponent's groin, hitting the referee, or even just going berserk on their opponent(and ignoring the referee's request to back off), they will have done something to get themselves disqualified. At its most basic? Walking back up the ramp so that the referee counts them out. As long as you're still the champion, who cares about a non-pinfall/submission loss? This is why No DQ/Falls Count Anywhere matches were created to begin with.


Sports

  • The NFL's Buffalo Bills held a slim lead in the closing seconds of a game against the New England Patriots. The Patriots' quarterback heaved a long pass (known as a "Hail Mary" due to the difficulty in completing it), but the Bills were called for Pass Interference in the endzone. Defensive Pass Interference as the clock expires gives the offense one more untimed down, which the Patriots used to score the winning points. The Bills by this point had seen the replay showing there was no interference, and were incensed when the refs tried to force them to come out and play the conversion even though it was completely meaningless. The Bills responded by storming off the field en masse, allowing New England to play the final conversion completely uncontested.
  • The much-hyped race between Michael Johnson and Donovan Bailey in 1997. At the time, Johnson held the world record for the 200m event, and Bailey held the record for the 100m. They were to settle the question of the "World's Fastest Man" with a 150m race. At around the 100m mark, Bailey was clearly ahead, and Johnson pulled up with an injured hamstring. Cynics thought he faked the injury rather than lose to Bailey fair and square.
  • During the 1976 Soviet Red Army vs Philidelphia Flyers exhibition game, the Soviet Team, who agreed to play by NHL rules, began protesting calls made by the officials. After vocal complaints weren't going anywhere, the Soviet Coach opted to call the entire team back and leave the game. In another Rage Quit move, the Flyers owner threatened to not pay the Soviets for the game should they leave. Eventually, the Red Army team relented and continued play...and lost.


Theatre

  • Chess: Freddie ragequits the very first chess game we see him play.

Video Games

  • A common rage quitting tactic in most games, especially RTS games, is for the loser to cut their own internet connection so that they would get disconnected rather than taking a loss, as well as spiting their opponents by forcing them wait for their connection to the server to time out. This tactic is commonly dubbed "plug pulling", and most games now count disconnects as automatic losses.
  • Team Fortress 2: Actually, Valve makes fun of this with the Pyro's "BarbeQueQ" achievement, which is awarded if a player you are Dominating ends up leaving the server you are currently playing in.
    • An achievement for the Spy, "Slash and Burn", is awarded if another player rage-switches to the Pyro class immediately after you kill him.
    • Also, the Scout now has a voice clip that says "Yeah, I dare ya, Rage Quit! C'mon, make us both happy!" when he Dominates someone.
    • Some servers will announce players on a losing side leaving the game as "RAGE QUIT!", with the requisite notification on your heads-up display and a Large Ham voice booming it so everyone can hear.
  • Whenever somebody leaves the game shortly after dying in "Heroes of Newerth" the announcer yells out RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAGGGEQUIT.
  • In Sid Meier's Sim Golf, NPC golfers will rage quit your golf course if their attitude levels drop too low, caused by a variety of factors, including unfair hole layouts, being bombarded by other golfers' balls, unkempt course grounds, and seeing other golfers rage quit.
  • In Red Dead Redemption, vindictive players have the option of murdering everyone at the card table where they were just blasted out of the pot at poker.
  • In one Fist of the North Star fighting game, a character actually has this as a Super Move. As a reference to his death in the series, Shin starts to limp away and tells his opponent that he won't give them the satisfaction of killing him, then throws himself into the anime speed line void. Not surprisingly, it counts as a win for Shin's opponent.
  • Inverted in You Don't Know Jack, as strange as that sounds. In the earlier games, if someone types in "Fuck You" as an answer to a Gibberish Question or other question with a typed answer, the host will make fun of you and deduct a vast amount of points from the offending player. Do it again, and the host does nothing, but makes fun of you for being unoriginal. Do it a third time, and the host gets so pissed that he ragequits the game on you, booting you back to the desktop!
  • Happens a LOT in Left 4 Dead. Seriously, it's reached outright memetic levels.
    • It's now an Ascended Meme: Valve made an achievement in Left 4 Dead 2 called Connecting Fights, where you could only earn the achievement by playing the Dead Air campaign (a campaign notable for rage quits even by Left 4 Dead standards) in VS mode from start to finish, meaning you can't quit. Valve's official blog encouraged people not to rage quit if they wanted this achievement.
    • Some servers in Left 4 Dead announce via text when someone rage quits (though the pluggin can't discern between people ragequitting and those leaving the server normally for other, more peaceful reasons).
  • Apparently, Neopets had enormous problems with people quitting while playing against other players in the Battledome and had to implement countermeasures because of this.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 3 includes a quits tracker, and punishes rage quitters by auto matching them with other rage quitters.
  • At the end of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All's 2nd case, Amoral Attorney Franziska von Karma is so furious at having been defeated by Phoenix that she angrily whips him into unconsciousness.
  • Infamously dubbed the "Logoffski" in the EVE Online community. When suddenly surprised by an enemy, players who quickly use the Alt+F4 command to kill the game client will initiate an automatic procedure called "Emergency Warp" designed to save players who suddenly lose internet connection. This will cause the ship to warp out of the battlezone and disappear after a couple of minutes, (hopefully) before your ship is destroyed.
    • Self-Destruct initiates a countdown that destroys your ship completely after a few minutes. The purpose is to deny the enemy anything salvageable from your wreckage, but also to denies them a kill mail confirmation. The latter reason is why Pv Pers hate it so much.
  • Leaving during a League of Legends match, assuming teams are more or less equal in terms of skill and progress, is almost always a guaranteed defeat for your team, meaning people on your team will get a rating loss without that being any of their fault. Thus, leaving during a match gives you a larger rating loss and no IP / Exp gain. It is also a punishable offense and, much like griefing and trashtalking, leads to eventual permaban.
  • Brutal Legend multiplayer does not count a disconnection as a loss. As a result many of the highest-ranked players on the leaderboards are ones who got there by pulling the plug whenever they're losing.
  • Mass Effect 3 has multiplayer where your character earns experience for each match. If you quit the game[1] you earn no experience or money.
  • Warlords2 offered a "Resign" option for hopeless situations, giving you the option to resign "ungracefully" (razing all your cities first) or "gracefully." If you choose to resign gracefully the game sneers at you and burns everything anyway.
  • Dota 2 solves this problem by flagging rage quitters for "abandonment". Flagged players are punished by taking lower priority in matchmaking and are only matched with other flagged players for a set period of time.


Webcomics

Web Original

I warn you now that the tale of Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge is long, cryptic, and incredibly stupid. I have never before wasted this much time on a project this pointless, and if you sit through this review, you will truly be stupider for having experienced it.

    • A similar thing happened in his review of The Adventures of Bayou Billy. After slogging through several stages of Nintendo Hard beatdowns, the final straw for him came when he encountered a bunch of enemy mooks who were immune to bullets.
      • "But a bullwhip messes them up!"
  • Epee Em in his Let's Play of the Mega Man Battle Network series. The whole Lets Play for the fourth game in the series featured Epee Em raging at the game's numerous flaws (and keeping track to pass the time and to give some motivation to beat the game). Because the game requires multiple playthroughs to unlock all the post-game content, he used cheat codes to burst through the second and third playthroughs. This caused a surprising amount of glitches such as permanently reducing the HP to a base zero, randomly deleting all of the in-game currency and completely glitching out during some minigames. The game itself responded by corrupting the save file at the end of the second playthrough.
  • Leelee Scaldaferri counts herself as the first person to Ragequit Feed Dump, after discovering how much the Jersey Shore cast makes per episode.
  • Perhaps one of the most justifiable Rage Quits was when Kikoskia of Let's Play fame rebooted Action 52 because he was utterly sick of playing Storm Over The Desert.
  • Rooster Teeth has a feature on their site called Rage Quit, where Michael plays through a game, which invariably becomes this trope. Sometimes it's more than justified, since he's going in with no instructions—going into Ikaruga without ever knowing how to switch polarities (a key gameplay mechanic and required to even pass Stage 1), for example. Bonus material showed that right after filming his play of Catherine, he flung the Xbox out the window and smashed its remains with a crowbar.
  • Raocow is normally a cheerful person, but when he plays a hard level ... things won't get pretty. In the next episode, he mentioned it as a Rage Quit.
  • True Capitalist radio broadcasts often end in this, due to Ghost's Hair-Trigger Temper
  • In The Guild, Codex unknowingly complains about recent changes to The Game's creator, who gets frustrated with the constant stream of criticism and decides to sell The Game. She spends the remainder of the season trying to talk him out of rage quitting.
  • Do NOT make up you own rules while playing a game with Natalie Tran. She will flip your scrabble board.
  • UberHaxorNova has an entire series dedicated to rage quitting now, he'll keep playing notoriously hard games until he gets to the breaking point. He made it 10 episodes on Super Meat Boy, 3 on I Wanna Be The Guy, 3 on Street Fighter X Tekken, 2 on The Impossible Game and 3 on Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes.
    • On Street Fighter X Tekken, he kept receiving challenges from players online. As a result, he never got past the first level of Arcade Mode.
  • Pro StarCraft II player Idra has picked up quite a reputation for being a notorious rage quitter. It's not uncommon during a tournament game where Idra will suddenly just quit the game when he's outplayed, even if he has a chance of making a comeback. What also doesn't earn points in his favor is that he hardly ever gives out the customary "gg" when he leaves.
  • Neil Cicierega's "What's Dylan Grillin'?" features a player trying to ragequit the titular game, only for the game to prevent it, leaving the player with the only option of hurling insults at the game.
  • In his Tokyo School Life video, Nerd3 rage quit early in the game when the main character felt Karin's breasts after a Crash Into Hello (a common Anime trope).

You know what, I've had enough of this page! RAAAAAAAs;oefgajsdnf;;alsdif'ar4'pahtt--

  1. ↑ or your connection to the EA server drops
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