Rules are meant to be broken; video games are no exception. Cheating has a long and storied history in video games, from the infamous Konami code to playing as Bill Clinton in NBA Jam. But that was back when gaming meant sitting huddled around a TV in the basement with your friends. Now, players log into online gaming platforms like Xbox Live to compete with 46 million other gamers. The adage “you’re only cheating yourself” doesn’t ring true when gamers take on millions of other people, and even the video game development companies themselves.
Cheating in video games has gone through many forms, and some of the methods are very creative. For years, game companies tried to tackle the issue, leaving us with stories like Jarvis Khattri. A new artificial intelligence (AI) system can detect any massive multiplayer online, or MMO, a game that sends data traffic to a central server. The new system can tell whether a player is cheating in online video game. University of Texas found the New AI System that detects the cheating in online video games Detecting cheats of computer games. I’ve got a confession to make: I’m a cheater. No, not on a significant other, a test, or a diet, but I am someone who does cheating in video games. I’m also not really ashamed of it. No, I don’t mean in multiplayer games or online. I’ve never hacked my health in a Dark Souls.
In 2011, the online gaming industry made $19 billion, not only from the sale of the original software, but also from countless microtransactions that happen during game play. Video game expert Scott Steinberg says that a relatively small group of cheaters can chase legitimate players (and their money) away from online gaming. “It’s entirely possible to break not only the in-game economy, but the actual economics around the game.” To avoid this, Steinberg says game developers spend vast amounts of time and money policing their game servers trying to find and ban cheaters.
According to Mia Consalvo, author of the book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames, cheating for real world profit has been going on for almost two decades, and has cost the video game industry millions of dollars. One of the more common forms of cheating involves the use of “bots,” which are small pieces of code designed to automate certain game processes and gather materials valuable in a particular game. “Instead of selling these things in the game, they’d list them on eBay, and make real money that way.” Consalvo adds.
In 2009, a player named Michael Donnelly developed a particularly effective bot called a “glider” to be used in the popular online game World of Warcraft, and began selling it to gamers through his company, MDY Industries LLC. The District Court of Arizona found Donnelly guilty of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, shutting down the operation and setting the legal precedent that cheating by rewriting or overriding the code of online games isn’t just unscrupulous — it’s illegal.
As the online gaming market expands through cell phone gaming, PC gaming and a strengthening of console games’ online offerings, space for cheaters to operate will only continue to grow. Unlike the video games being fought over, the struggle between the cheaters and game developers won’t be won with strategy and skill, it will be won with money.
Cheat Enabled
Cheating can be a fun purpose, and today it is a common use, especially on old video games. But what are the reasons of people who do cheating in video games, whether it is on a single player or multiplayer video game?
1. Game System or Mechanic is Too Hard
Well, for first timers, gaming systems in some video games are difficult, or likewise difficult to play. Mechanics, such as complex button controls and sequences, and ‘troublesome’ condition systems, are the factors why do people resort to cheat the game. They want easy controls, such as one-button function and such. And even enabling the ‘god mode’ wherein the player will never take any damage at all (except on falling in the bottomless pits).
2. Hard Progression
Basically, they want to advance into hard levels without completing them. They do cheat because completing some levels are very hard for them. Counter strike condition zero pc game cheats. Some codes or sequences are entered on a certain screen to activate it, causing the player to advance quickly into higher levels, or even at the final level of the game.
Cheating With Video Games
3. Item Acquisitions
There are items in the game which are difficult to acquire, or likewise to find. Players shall be needing them in order to beat that certain boss in the game by using or equipping that item. To make things easy for them, they do cheat in acquiring items by entering code sequence, or even exploiting the game’s binary code (another way of cheating by means of using a third-party software). Hercules android game cheats.
4. Character Unlock Grinding
Basically, you will have to start playing a game with only one character. And in order to unlock other characters, you need to finish the game with that character, for that character to be unlocked. In some chances, that character will be unlocked without even finishing the game by doing some conditions in the game.
But for cheaters, they do enter a code sequence which will unlock all of the characters in the game without even grinding. Commonly, it is for one-shot beat-em-up single or multiplayer video games.
5. To Discover Other Game’s Features
Basically, people do cheat in order to maximize the video game’s additional features. Additional features, such as unlocking the scrapbook function, or even using the secret code in which it was given on your screen when you finished playing the game.
Cheating In Video Games Should Be Illegal
Cheating Today is Illegal… In Online Gaming World
In general, today, cheating can be legal, only if you are playing on a single player mode only (i.e. console video gaming). In multiplayer gaming, especially online, cheating is illegal, to consider. And people who play with these cheaters are in disadvantage saying that it’s unfair and no balance.
A lot of online games have removed the cheating feature in order to give enjoyment to players who really loved playing them. So basically, cheating others is just like you are a cheater in real life.
Cheating Video Game Gif
So if you are going to cheat-play with the game, just don’t play because it’s just a waste of time.
The Anti-Cheat System
So then, a lot of games now have an anti-cheat system which prevents players from completing the game if they had used cheats. For example, a certain game, like Medal of Honor for PlayStation, prevents players from advancing to the further levels in the game if they had used cheats. Actually, the cheats in the game can be used in the previously-played levels only. But then, in order to advance to the next level, the player should not use cheats.
Cheating Meaning Video Games
Banning and Segregation in Matchmaking
For people who cheat in the online games, especially MMOs and MOBAs, the gaming companies have implemented some measures to either ban a player’s account if it detects a hacking program, or even placing them in a matchmaking process where their opponents are also cheaters (May the best cheater win lol).
Summary
Why do people cheat in the games that they are playing?
First is that the gaming mechanics of that game is too hard to memorize, or to control. Second is their progression in the game, such as having difficulties in passing the hard levels. Third is that they can acquire items easily since grinding for items for a single item such as equipment or skill can be a waste of time and makes them easily tired. Fourth is that they were able to unlock characters easily (through access codes or button sequences) and test them. And finally, they do cheat because they want to maximize the game’s other features, assuming that they had already finished playing the game and wanted to repeat them more.
To remember the points, cheating and the use of cheat codes are designed by the developers of the game. And the intention really was to test the game for possible bugs and glitches (but there are still more bugs, though the game was free of bugs and glitches, but really not).
Today, the cheating tactics are considered illegal in the online gaming world, especially on MOBAs and MMOs. Why illegal? It is because it breaks the game’s balance and the players will call them as unfair. So then, an anti-cheating tools were made by the developers of that game so that it can detect if that player is cheating. Finally, the players will not progress in a level in the single player game if they used cheats. Given that the cheats can be only used in the previously-played levels, players will be forced to complete the game without using cheats at all.