Enlarge (credit: Killer Instinct / Aurich)

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: