In the tight-knit community of competitive fighting games, it's not rare for specific characters, stages, or moves to be banned because they throw off the game's competitive balance. In the Killer Instinct community, though, players in one major tournament are faced with a ban on "teabagging," which has nothing to do with competitive balance and everything to do with taunting, sportsmanship, and "professionalism."

Teabagging involves crouching on top of a prostrate opponent repeatedly, humiliating them by sticking your character's virtual crotch in their face when they're powerless to stop it (mature, we know). While the taunt is most popular in online first-person shooters, the act has found some traction in the fighting game community as well. Killer Instinct gives more opportunities for teabagging than most other fighting games, because winning players can continue to move and teabag opponents in between rounds.

The Killer Instinct World Cup first instituted a ban on teabagging last year, and that ban is being extended after debate over the issue got particularly heated in a private Facebook group. Fighting game tournament organizer and team manager Rotendo Camarena described the Facebook discussion to PVPLive:

It started about Shadow Jago and later talked about [a particular player] using his taunt. Then someone got salty about losing and expressed their opinion about taunts/tea bagging — then made a threat about physical violence toward someone if they were to see them in person at a tournament.

After the thread was briefly shut down (and a tournament ban was issued for the participant who made the threat), Killer Instinct World Cup coordinator Brandon Alexander came into the thread to reiterate that the anti-teabagging rule would be back for this year's tournament. In a message captured and shared by Rotendo on Twitter, Alexander wrote:

The reasoning is simple: sportsmanship/professionalism. Plus on top of that it seems to be causing players to start threatening others. We promote a fun, professional and safe experience. Not a violent and unprofessional one. If you don't like it, you don't have to go to KIWC. We as the community have to start setting the standard."

Unsportsmanlike conduct or mind game?

Debates over the appropriate level of allowable taunting aren't exclusive to fighting games. The NFL has penalized "excessive celebration" after a touchdown since 1984, and it tightened up those rules in 2006 to ban the use of props. In pro tennis, you can get flagged with a "code violation" for simple "racket abuse" or "ball abuse" (insert sophomoric joke here).

But many in the community see taunting as a deeply ingrained part of the fighting game scene, even when those taunts aren't specifically built in to the game by developers. Some even consider teabagging to be an extension of the mind games inherent in all fighting games.

"Fighting games are psychology. Disrespecting your opponent can be a psychological play. A ban for taunting removes important human aspect," Killer Instinct developer Adam "Keits" Heart wrote on Twitter in response to the rule. Killer Instinct pro Dominique "SonicFox" McLean tweeted his support for the teabagging taunt as well: "I often use tbaggin [sic] as a way to make the opponent crack or get angry as well too. Dirty but efficient if you get tight easily."

Gameplay aside, teabagging can also be seen as just another way to express yourself in a game. "You know, competitive games CAN tell a story ABOUT THE PLAYERS if you LET THEM," Heart added on Twitter. "Trying to force everyone to be friendly is shortsighted..."

Not all forms of self-expression are equal in a tournament situation, though. Plenty of players use trash talk to try to psych out opponents during fighting game matches, for instance. But that kind of trash talk can go too far, as Tekken player Aris Bakhtanians found out when he faced widespread criticism for overtly sexual comments toward a female competitor at a 2012 tournament.

Tournament organizers also have to take into account the vulgarity of a taunt like teabagging when trying to present a fighting game in a way that can potentially appeal to mainstream audiences and advertisers. In that way, the debate over teabagging has some echoes in the debate that sprang up when porn site Brazzers tried to sponsor a pro fighting game team in 2012 . More recently, ESPN required a player to change in-game costumes after Mika's "default" costume in

In the end, the community will have to come to its own conclusions about these kinds of issues. Is it necessary to hold some things back to project an image of eSports respectability that could bring in wider viewership (and prize money)? Or is it more important to maintain the sometimes vulgar forms of self-expression that have long been valued by many high-level fighting game players?