When roommates have a falling-out, it’s usually because of money.

So, how would you handle it if your roommate was constantly late paying rent but somehow still had money for his favorite online game and spent most of his time playing it? Would you keep covering his share? Or would you find a good way to prove your point?

In the following story, one roommate deals with this scenario and changes some router settings. Here’s what happened.

Don’t pay your rent? No Star Wars Galaxies for you!

I used to have a roommate who was always late with his rent and always had an excuse.

Every month, I’d hit him up for rent and bills and would end up covering most of it myself while he figured out his finances. I paid all the utilities, including the internet.

This was back when the Star Wars Galaxies video game had just come out (I think it was the 1st star wars MMORPG?), and he went crazy for this game, playing almost all his waking hours.

Fed up, he found a solution.

Not sure if it was the game or not, but he started getting really late on his rent. Not just a couple of days or a week anymore, but sometimes paying a week before rent was due again.

After about 6 months of this, it started bothering me a bit. He had told me that he would pay his rent (being about 2 weeks late), but when I went to collect, he only gave me half. I did notice he had purchased a couple of subscription cards for his Star Wars game, though, and felt a little fed up.

I googled what network ports the game used to access the remote servers, then blocked only those ports on my router. I heard him say ‘***’ in the other room seconds after I saved the settings.

His roommate would occasionally ask him to reset the router.

He came in asking if there was something wrong with the internet, so I showed him on the screen and said everything looked fine from here.

For days, he was Googling and calling Sony tech support to try to fix the issue, but he could not figure it out.

A couple of times, he’d ask me to reboot the router, and I’d say, “Sure, buddy! No problem!”

To this day, the guy doesn’t know what happened.

He could do anything else on his computer or play any other online game. He was only blocked from playing his favorite one. Every couple of days, he’d pop his head in my room and ask if I could check the settings or reboot the router one more time.

I’d agree, then tell him everything looks fine on my end. Which it was. I ended up never unblocking those ports, and he had to move back to WoW or something. He moved out long before the game shut down in 2011, so maybe he got to use those game cards after all.

We’re still friends, but I never told him I did that. I’m pretty sure he’d say he suspected I did something, but oh well. Pay your rent on time, *****.

Yikes! This is why you never mess with someone who knows their way around a computer.

Let’s check out if the people over at Reddit have ever done something similar.

This person sees another side of it.

Here’s someone who uses this as punishment for their kid.

For this reader, he was a sucker.

According to this comment, he should’ve tried another approach.

That definitely taught him, but maybe a more honest approach would’ve been better.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.