It's a toy. It doesn't matter how you play with it.

As an elder gamer, I have a much better sense of what cheats will enhance my enjoyment of a game and which ones will ruin it.

So I do what I think will make me happy and I'm usually pretty accurate.

Yes in single player games if something starts to bore/bother me. I don't play games for the challenge.

Nah, never did it. If I'm not good, I stop playing at some point, unless it's fun enough that it doesn't matter.

playing Souls games has taught me failure is a part of the process, so I enjoy hitting that wall and overcoming it with the tools the game provides. I do still use cheats sometimes in case of a game bug, but largely I treat gaming as an escape, and that includes an escape from people cheating systems so having it all be fair is within that escapism fantasy lol

Depends on the game and what you define as "cheating"

For me, if I'm trying to play a game and a glitch happens where it makes me lose progress, I'll "cheat" to get back that progress. Like in Minecraft, I usually play nodded Minecraft. That has more glitches in it and you can easily lose hours of progress from things like that.

I'm not made of time. If I lose or get fucked over by glitches, I don't consider getting back to where I was cheating. Maybe it is but I don't care. I play games to have fun, not to do a second job.

And to that point, I really like it when games give you an accessibility setting of some kind where it makes it harder to die or makes the game easier outside of an easy mode. I sometimes use those too. In Hades, I've been struggling a ton and turning on god mode has made it more fun for me.

Not really cheating but my point is if you make the game easier to have fun or make it more accessible, I don't really think it matters.

all the time but just to the level that I want to. I learned way back when with wiz maker that to much cheating ruins the game. in doom I would get to the end and then do the map cheat and get everything I missed. i play no mans sky in creative mode.

I've recently played a bunch of Valheim and Enshrouded, and modded both a bit.

The mods I'm seeing in these games are overwhelmingly cheat mods. Not like aimbot in counter strike, but like... Many different flavors of trying to get to creative mode without being in creative mode. It's all just cheating. And most of it is AI slop. SOOOO much AI slop.

How do you define cheating?

Mostly with Sega genesis, n64, etc when I was kid. It was fun. And one and only time I used in multiplayer was Diablo 2 in hardcore when I was a teen, I used those tppk program for a bit, just messing around and pk'd a couple of players. And I haven't since then.

I don't see point in cheating in PvP games, I want to develop a skill. But nowadays I avoid most multiplayer PvP games anyway because of cheaters. I enjoy solo, pve and group play more than PvP.

Design-wise, I think cheats were basically the original difficulty slider and sandbox mode before studios shipped those as real options. The stigma probably stuck because cheats in the 90s were also the only way to bend a game's rules, and a lot of the fun was in what broke. Big head mode never made a game harder, it just changed the mood. Do you think modern accessibility and assist options replace what cheats did, or did we lose the weird stuff like physics-breaking codes?

Depends how.

Using Rimworld as an example because I'm playing it now, I'll occasionally create a separate save file in the same seed at the same location and turn on god mode to see if certain defensive strategies will work before I implement them in the actual game.

Additionally I'll sometimes save scum, but only if I think the consequence I'm trying to avoid would ruin the fun for me, I remind myself that sometimes bad things happening can be interesting, but I work a lot and don't want to have to start from scratch because a mechanoid colony landed in the perfect place to wipe my tribe.

But I don't give myself infinite food or the best weapons because that just wouldn't be fun. I need challenge, I need to overcome hardship and come out ahead. I don't want to cheat myself out of my victory.

That being said people still shouldn't cheat in multi-player games.

Depends. For games where i feel like a god, no. Hard games like recently mortal shell 2, i wish. Sometimes I just need extra help to get my build quicker. For valheim, it's so relaxing turning fighting off and just mine, grow food and build things.

If you think cheating in a single player game is fun. Go ahead, who cares. If you cheat in an online game, you are total scum. Not fit to exist in society tbh

I decided to use walkthroughs which was a similar thought process for me. I don't have unlimited time either.

If the devs can't make a fun game I sure as hell won't make it fun by cheating, I don't know anything about game design or how things fit into a meta narratives. Sometimes, you have to have some trust in the devs (otherwise, why did I give them my money?). A quick look at how other people tackle a problem is also often more helpful, since there is a good chance I'm stubbornly not using some tool in my arsenal.

I use cheats to quickly test things in games lacking an editor, otherwise... the games I play don't lend themselves to cheating, anyway. Cheat codes really don't make much sense when lowering a difficulty somewhere is an option.

For a first playthrough, no.

For a game I know and love and have come back to, yeah totally, sometimes. I have fully embraced CHIM and just get born with 500k septims in my pocket now whenever I play Morrowind. I save edit my inventory all the time in Terraria, especially looking for that one specific crafting recipe accessory that just hasn't spawned. I mostly do it to eliminate grind on games where I've already served my time properly.

I never knew of that stigma. I grew up in the 90s too and as far as I can remember cheat codes were myths, legends.... you'd obtain some level-skip codes in magazines, others through word of mouth... and some were completely made up, such as the one where you could allegedly get Lara Croft naked by making 200 full turns in the bathtub

I used to when I was younger, but I don't any longer because overcoming the challenge became a big part of the fun for me.

Considering it's very rare I am playing online outside of with friends, yes on occasion. With friends, I obviously don't cheat because duh, but even for the one MMO I play, I don't wanna risk being banned on a fan server for an MMO literally designed for kids. So, not for games against other players, though, unless everyone has the same advantages or an agreement is made.

As for singleplayer games, I see no harm, so at various points I might do it. Kinda game dependent, though. If speedup is considered cheating, then yes I cheat at Mindustry using a game speedup mod. Same with the mod that allows me to take control of and explode my units at will, which I barely use. Only ever need it to clear some units blocking my visibility when building in crampt sectors after capturing them, though.

Though, I heavily use cheats ( debug mode ) in the Pokemon Rejuvenation fangame jist because of how long and difficult it is on classic mode vs story mode ( normal vs easy difficulty ). Debug mode just speads so much stuff up it's not funny. No need for me to worry about grinding EVs or wasting time if I have to run and grind exp candies to train another mon in my box.

Similar things can be said about other longer fangames that fall into the Reborn/Rejuv type very long and very story driven fangame category as well. I really like debug mode for those games because it just makes slogging through certain parts easier and less annoying in terms of not having to backtrack through an area to heal up.

Yeah, otherwise, I normally don't cheat too much, but am not against it. Especially considering I really don't care whether you cheat or not in a singleplayer game as long as you ain't deceiving others about your usage/achievements using them.

Only if I run into a bug or blocker that would basically mean all the time I spent playing was useless.

I used to cheat in two ways

The first way is in minecesft skywars on hypixel. I was 12 at the time, had 300 ping, and just wanted a win. Regret it now.

The second way was in single player games. I'd hack in items mainly just to avoid grinds. I'm okay with myself still doing this if I apply stringent rules I must follow (such as only hacking in rare candies in a nuzlocke with a level cap), but you have to remember that you're your own worst enemy in this regard. It's so easy to start overreaching and take away the "game" part of the videogame. I remember hacking in a bunch of free money in btd5 when I first played it, and I heavily regret it because it robbed me of experiencing the game.

Not unless I'm wanting to test something specific in a single player game. Beyond that, it seems really pointless.

I've "cheated" in Minecraft I guess :3 like playing with keep inventory or peaceful mode, when I just wanna hang out :3. Or turning on creative mode to quickly fly out of caves instead of walking back, or spawning in more torches cause I forgot mine at the base

Other than that the only time I cheated in an online game was for a knock-off halo game. That game was shutting down, and basically the only way you could play it was if you had the files as it was not available for download anymore by that point.. and as the userbase dwindled most players left seemed to be cheaters, so then it was just leveling the playing field :p

Most games are too easy. The moment you figure out how AI is playing it becomes too predictable and boring.

So, i do changes to make the game more difficult, more challenging, more memorable moments.

Mods aren't considered cheating even if they make things easier, but then that is cheating, unless is makes other things harder to balance.

Never. I literally never use cheats. I do not even use mods.

My answer: Yes, I do cheat and mod games. Got a habit of save scumming here and there. I have had wrote my own simple cheats for some older multiplayer games too. These were either a learning experience or, for singleplayer, just to goof mostly after completing a campaign or when replaying it.

The interesting part for me is that researching and developing on cheats had solidified my interest to work in cyber (which I work in right now). There's handful of people I know who had branched off to interesting tech positions similarly. It does offer an interesting perspective for technical folks. It is very much facilitated by technical knowledge out there compared to 90s (even after you exclude AI-assisted methods in the recent years).

But I do sympathise with many others here. Its not fun to be in the receiving end (unless you are playing with friends lol). My advice is try to have a good sportsmanship when you are playing with others. Go crazy with your singleplayer stuff. Games are meant to be fun and experimental.

Yeah, cheating is awesome.

I do not. If I cheat, what's the point of playing? I want to challenge myself to see if I can beat the game. If I can't, the game is too hard for me, or not a very good game. 🤷‍♂️ Simple as that, in my opinion.

Yes and no. Cheating is for tinkering or messing around with mechanics in a sandbox like game IMO.

Ived cheated in games before and I just burn out faster and ruins the experience. I even go as far as won't use mods if they feel unbalanced or ruin the vibe. Sometimes I'll use them, but if the game has mods I'll try to beat it vanilla first as it gives me a lot more context on what mods do and what i want from them.

Some games its just fine to use cheats. Really depends on the game and the experience but mostly the awnser is no.

no, that would defeat the purpose of multiplayer and competition

if you're referring to modding a singleplayer game or consensually in a multiplayer one, then yeah I mod the fuck out of stuff. that's fun.

Yes, for fun once I've finished the game normally. Not on multiplayer.

Singleplayer: After completing the game and feel like messing with it a bit more. On games that do not support it; injecting to memory to tweak stuff is fine.

Multiplayer: Only if everyone is aware of it (stuff like Minecraft 6b6t and CSGO HvH servers). It gives a different flavour to the typical gameplay loop.

But if the people I play with are unaware, i feel like it robs the enjoyment out of everyone.

As long as it's not against other people either PvP or leaderboards, I couldn't care less.

I get mods to turn off weight carry limits pretty often. Occasionally I get other quality of life mods too. Anytime something is harder because it's annoying and not a skill thing, I'll fix it.

I will occasionally use other cheats temporarily. Most recently in Tainted Grail I was not specced for a face to face boss fight in a small room with Gallahad. I tried about 8 times and even tried to google if I was doing something wrong. I had done every quest available and had to go through him. So I slapped god mode on and killed him and his goons and turned it back off. Been playing like 90 hours now and haven't needed any other cheats but if I hadn't had a way to get by him I'd have probably quit even though I love the game.

Only with save states in old games, generally. Donkey Kong Country 2 comes to mind when I think about aggressive savescumming.

Not really, unless save scumming counts. I just find it boring and if I need cheats to get through a game I'm more likely to drop it and maybe watch the rest of the story on YouTube.

Only when I run into bugs or other issues. Like I'll turn noclip on if I get stuck in some geometry or enable god mode to get through a bugged script trigger that instsntly kills you when it's not supposed to. Or teleport somewhere because I don't want to run all the way back somewhere because I forgot to grab a thing I needed to grab.

Used to use them a lot more back in the day when they had fun shit like Big Head Mode and lower gravity. Cheating specifically to win takes away all the fun for me.