I don’t find shame in cheating in video games. It was a stigma to hear about growing up, that cheating in video games meant you prefer the shortcuts in life or that you didn’t know what earning anything was. When, that was all just bullshit talk.
I cheat in video games, when available to on some games, to give me a little kick of fun. Sometimes I don’t have the patience to tediously go through the standard way. Other times, I feel I’ve earned it anyways, because of having undergone the stresses and frustrations or the time I’ve played of certain games to go through the normal way.
Like in Terraria, it’s a game I’ve clocked in upwards of 900 hours. I felt like I had done everything in the game prior to the content that added the Moon Lord and many other things. At that time, it was 850 hours.
So the point of the matter is, yeah I don’t find it that big of a deal to cheat in video games. If I cared to and want to, I’m decent enough to handle games without cheats, given enough time.
Multiplayer of course I never cheat in those.
I used to be like you. Way back when, I would love to cheat currency into single player games with a little help from cheat engine. The biggest culprits were BTD5 and PvZ1/2, and it’d give me a kick just being able to go through and buy everything before using it all while feeling unstoppable
Since then, I’ve gone back and replayed the games without cheating, and I honestly regret using cheat engine. It felt way more rewarding getting everything at a more sustainable rate, like I really earned the item
You also talk about feeling like you earn the ability to cheat, but, looking back on my own experience, I can safely say that I was terrible at gauging whether or not I should use a hack. Turns out, when you have a shiny item in a shop that you could come back in a few hours for or get instantly now for free, more often than not we’ll choose the latter
As long as no one else is being affected and my experience is being hampered I will
I never cheat online multiplayer. I like to be challenged and cheating ruins it.
I hate that modding is considered cheating by some games when all I want is quality of life improvement. Divinity 2 does this by disabling achievements if you installed any mods but thankfully there is another mod that re-enables achievements.
I never play PvP (skill issue).
I will always cheat, but only by making the mods myself. I often find that I learn more about the game and have more fun modding than actually playing. For PvE, I make sure that everyone is aware of my mods and OK with them, or I turn off the mods they don’t like.
I am not OK with ruining other peoples fun. I’ve even permanently deleted a mod which could cause issues in the wrong hands, because my hands were definitely the wrong hands. I’m still sad, but everyone else in that game is better off.
Everyone has fun in their own way. If a game is not fun for you, sometimes the right mods or cheats can make it fun. If no one else is harmed, then you’re playing it right.
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If you cheat in a single player game you do you. You can do whatever you want. If you do the same in a multiplayer online game: fuck you, you are ruining it for the rest of us.
Edit: To answer the question: No, I don’t cheat. Neither in single player nor in multiplayer games.
IDKFA
It’s fun cheating in single player games after you’ve already finished them the normal way.
Cheating otherwise robs you of the experience.
Cheating if the game is simply too hard or unplayable, is also acceptable.
Cheating in online games? Especially against other people? You’re an asshole.
I used to, back in the days of cheat codes, because they were fun.
The only real way to cheat now is to hack the game. This will mean doing shit loads of homework to learn how to do it myself, or pay for some dodgy software that may or may not contain a virus to download all my nudes and blackmail me for bitcoin while my account gets terminated for cheating so I could win a couple games on COD.
I do not any more.
Years ago - I did cheat in many single player games. For example, I am extremely bad at RTS. Couldn’t beat computer on easy in WC3, even today. I was cheating during campaign just to go thought the story of the game.
I did cheat in WoW pirate server but not in the way of malice. I only did use flight cheat to travel quickly and a small teleport 1m ahead because sometimes quests or dungeons were broken and this was the only way to deal with that. I never used cheats in BGs or against other players but one of my friends did and got banned many times for that.
I have never cheated in any PvP games like CSGO, LoL, HOTS, L4D2, PUBG, COD, Town of Salem. I hate when cheaters ruin my game. I would not want to ruin anyone else’s game.
General rule: single-player cheats are ok. Multiplayer cheats - not ok.
I use cheat engine speedhack (with different speed hotkeys) in almost every game. Got that long walk in Witcher/Skyrim ahead of you? 2x game speed. Got some waiting to do while the base builds in Command and Conquer? Speed up. For whatever reason you can’t pause SPTarkov? 0x speed. As someone with limited gaming time, Cheat Engine speed function is a blessing
If I find a game too tedious and I’m about to drop it then sometimes I cheat whatever currency the game uses by editing RAM values which is braindead easy. Single player only. If it makes me want to keep playing. I have less patience for poor pacing as I get older.
Except Wreckfest if it counts. I had zero interest in the shitty single player campaign. I just wanted to race online but the game locks most cars behind a crappy uninspired single player grind. I gave myself enough money to just buy everything and then soley focused on online play.
Edit: oh and carry weights are my second most cheated thing. I get no joy out of shop runs. I don’t give a shit if my pockets being unlimited is “unrealistic” so is carrying whatever artibrary capped number it is like 250lbs everywhere without a backpack. Takes nothing away from the fun to cheat this waste of time shit.
Infinite Weapon durability in System Shock 2 and Zelda BOTW also come to mind. Stuff like that.
What do you define as cheating? Like I might look up a guide online, sometimes, but I never use mods or exploit bugs.
Looking up a guide isn’t cheating.
Would you consider using a mod to get infinite money in Warhammer Total War, thus bypassing the need to build production buildings and allowing you to focus entirely on military infrastructure and creating huge armies all over the map, therefore creating a global Wood Elf hegemony, which would otherwise be completely impossible cheating? So would I. But I’m doing it anyway because it’s fun and I paid for the game.
you can’t cheat on a blow up doll. solo play is not cheating.
no, I mod them
there is no such thing as cheating in a personal game
don’t tell the people on Don’t Starve forums, but save mods are totally okay and not at all “cheating and ruining the game”. you know what ruins the game? losing my several hundred days of progress because I didn’t actually pause the game when my dog started making puking sounds and I ran away from my computer
also, Minecraft automation - sure, I could let my server run overnight, or I could just directly give myself the materials the farm would have produced in 12 hours and save the power consumption. ofc I validate all my farms before I do any of that, and I don’t give more resources than they produce.
Yep, I bounced off Don’t Starve so many times after losing everything on a good run. It’s too involved, too long, and there’s too much endgame content to be happy to start again after making a tiny mistake dozens/hundreds of hours in. It’s not like Hades or Balatro where a top tier run lasts like half an hour. If life was as ruthless as Don’t Starve, there would be no time to play Don’t Starve, because we would all be dead.
I’m generally not interested in playing a game in any way other than how the dev(s) intended. Ex. for a souls like, I don’t get any enjoyment using mods to access content I’m otherwise unable to on my own. Using cheats to unlock all guns in GTA, or to get infinite rare candies in pokemon, or to time travel in Animal Crossing is fun for all of about 5 minutes, at which point I feel like I’ve deconstructed the fun out of the game.
My unique experience with a game is defined both by what I do and what I don’t experience. If I use cheats to ensure I experience everything, then IMO I’ve effectively dashed anything unique about my experience with the game.
That said, there are games that I feel I’ve experienced all there is that the dev intended, and now I can use it as a platform for my own creation through mods or custom game modes. Those are generally few and far between though. Something like Minecraft, primarily because it works great as a platform for multiplayer interaction.
