Griefing - videogame social harassment

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Has anyone dealt with this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer

DS had never heard the term, but a friend accused him of doing it. I know that he didn't, because he'd asked to join the friend on Minecraft, and the friend had refused (and I was in the room at the time.)

A few days later, someone poured virtual hot lava on one of his buildings and blew it up with TNT. He was able to reset back to where he'd been before, and he changed the settings on his game so that nobody could come into it unawares, but he's really upset because he heard the other boy laughing as he did it (he thinks he knows who it was - we do at least know it was someone on his friends list.)

I'm not sure where to go with this. It is certainly a form of cyberbullying, but I don't know enough about how an Xbox works to do things like document and take screen shots. Help?

you were on minecraft, that's pretty much all you do in multiplayer.

hide your house, fill the surrounding area with traps, pray like hell no one finds it and destroy them before they destroy you.

Thank you. So, if he does catch someone at it, is there a way to take a screenshot on Xbox live?

At this point I think it's less the issue on the actual game, and more what to do about it IRL.

find his home.
blow it up.

i really REALLY dont want to come off as a jerk, but really, thats not cyber bullying, thats a part of minecraft. it causes no real damage other than hurt feelings(which happens on ANY game.) I feel statements like this take away from the severity of legitimate cyber bullying(for example, i witnessed some poor girl on older games literally be forced to choose between sending some dude pictures of a dubious nature or never being able to enjoy the game, naturally i interviened, but thats a case of cyber bullying, not your house on minecraft being burned down)
theres numerous anti-griefing mods on minecraft for a reason, some servers outright allow it, others do not.
the part you arent going to like is this:

Griefers on minecraft are uh, well you cannot play a public server and not run into them, they are that common. To be brutally honest with you, i think it is somewhat immature to accuse another kid of doing it over hearing him giggle about something.
either theres more to this that you arent telling us(maybe he didnt tell you) or you have no real case here.

Frankly, you cant really document it if its the xbox version, you can take a picture of the damage, but you cannot prove who did it or when it happened, and it may not even have been against any rules.

your best choice tbh is to stop playing with these people.

I hate those people in Minecraft I have had that happen to me on a mod pack Minecraft Server. The best options for servers to get on to is ones with what is called Hawkeye because it can undo the damage but if the chests are damaged during the roll back it will not restore those items but will repair the buildings. The one thing I dod in minecraft to prevent my main stuff from getting stolen is I put all the valuable items like the ores and Diamonds in to your inventory before you leave. Also another suggestions if you have alot of ores and diamonds is craft them into iron, gold, diamond blocksk, and soon redstone blocks and put all those into your player inventory before you leave the server.

But also keep in mind Minecraft is only a game, pixels basicly.

Acting expressly to hurt someone else's feelings is bullying, period. There are certainly more severe forms of bullying, but this instance is no different than when these same kids stole my son's lunchbox three days in a row and laughed at him about it. It's totally different than someone's feelings being hurt when they lose a game the traditional way, for instance. Sorry, but griefing is not OK - there are dozens and dozens of Minecraft forums about it.

You are right, we don't know exactly what happened, though, and I'm not sure how certain my son can be of who did it - which is why I'm coming here for help.

What you are describing are not griefers, then. They are bullys from the real world continuing to harrass your kid online.

Just so I have the terminology correct, can you explain how you see the term? The definition on Wikipedia that I'm seeing in other places is:

It sounds to me like a gaming equivalent of a troll. But here is the thing: it isn't personal. They don't care who they attack.

If you think it was personal, that is a different matter.

I hadn't known this, but apparently Minecraft has to be downloaded somewhere; it has no servers of its own. My kids now play on a private server created on a home network that a grand total of 5 people have access to. If you have a home network, or one of your son's friends families do, give the kids the tech challenge of setting it a private Minecraft server and securing it. Your son might still be a little young, but if one of the parent's is good with tech and can look over their shoulders ...

Overall, however, I've had about enough of Minecraft. I didn't mind at first, because it does teach some syntax, but the game gets way too obsessive for my taste and I've told the kids that if they don't more some self-control about it, we're going to pull access. My son got a fancy gaming computer on our dime to CREATE games, not sit all vacation playing Minecraft. And my NT daughter is worse. It's not ALL they do, since they have busy lives outside the home, but it is definitely too much of a default for them.

The Xbox version is slightly different (Xbox has its own server) What we do know is that it was someone on my son's "friends" list, because he had it restricted to that point - so it wasn't someone who didn't know him (we don't allow him to "friend" strangers.)

He was able to change the game's privacy settings to "invite-only" so no one can enter his world without him knowing, so I think we have addressed the issue of other kids on his site going forwards. I am more than a little concerned that other kids are accusing him, as he does tend to be the kid who get blamed for things.

I'm sorry, but you're missing the point entirely. this wasn't a personal attack and he wasn't targeted. if the griefer was some random as you say it was, then they had no way of knowing who they were greifing. you're over-analysing things.

I'm saying the griefer was NOT random; his game was only open to his friends list, only about twenty people or so.

As for griefers who randomly vandalize stranger's Minecraft creations (which is not what occurred here) - I don't see the difference between that and trolling on a forum like WP.

then simply close the MP server to everyone unless they're in a party. it's not that hard.

there's a big difference between grieifng Minecraft and trolling. grieifng is a standard practice done for fun simply to annoy people, but it's done in a humorous fashion where both players later blow it off like it's nothing.

for example.
waiting for another player to go to sleep then building blocks around them.
putting blocks in front of their door then setting fire to the house.
(running a PC server) changing all textures to lava.

on the other hand, when trolling is done correctly the other person will never know that they've been trolled. it's harsh and brutal.

If you read what I posted, you'll see that we did this.

My point is this: if you have all agreed that this kind of behavior is in good fun, it is OK. If you are doing this to someone and they don't know about it and didn't generally agree to it, it is not fun and not OK. If you do a search on the word, you will find numerous examples of people who don't like it, are afraid of it, and don't want it to happen to them - and many of them are looking for solutions to prevent it from happening.

Practical jokes and pranks tend to be a double-edged sword both on the internet and IRL; you have to know how your prank will be received before you can say it's all in good fun.

im going to sound like a massive prick here but honestly it needs to be said.

the problem is you are assuming(probably erroneously) that it was done with the specific intent to upset your child, which is not likely the case, most griefing on minecraft is literally a case of some less than agreeable person randomly discovering a structure and just being mean. As for it being 'friends only', dont kid yourself, some of us have been in those shoes, most peoples friend list are full of people they dont really know and just played and had fun with at some point, If you have legitimate evidence that a specific person did it specifically to upset your kid, then you have a troll on your hands and they should sever contact, its still not cyber bullying. either way, if these kids steal his stuff and laugh about it in real life, he shouldnt be playing any games with them period, because on the internet they know he cant do anything about it.

I once built a castle on minecraft, it took about 50,000 blocks, and 6 people about 30 hours a piece to complete,, it was complete with hidden redstone passageways, a 'retractable' drawbridge over a moat, and a few other pretty highly engineered goodies. the floors were all wood, i had hand designed really nifty designs into the floors with different types of wood. 2 weeks later someone dumped a single bucket of lava on the highest point which burned through the upper floors, and flooded completely the interior, I was not angry or upset, because i built this thing knowing that griefers happen.

the point of that is, griefing happens to anyone that plays that game, sometimes(as in my case) a lot more work is destroyed from it, and i didnt have the option to restore it, By playing online you agree to accept that this is a part of the game, likei t or not(btw natural forest fires and lightning strikes can also destroy your stuff, along with endermen and creepers) you simply cannot start a crusade against 'bullies' over your kids house being griefed in minecraft.


either way, honestly if you are going to try to pass off light griefing incidents as 'cyber bullying' im going to say you are part of the problem, theres a very big difference between a bully and someone who just annoys people intentionally. at the end of the day flooding someones minecraft server with lava is just that, an attempt to annoy them.