I would consider dev mode in rimworld to be cheating in a “technically it is” sort of way.. spawning infant thralls that are then adopted by my colony, or spawning whatever activity site I choose are definitely not how the game is supposed to work. The mods are sort of also cheating I guess, tho most of them are content heavy.. there are definitely several hacky mods in my list, like minify everything.

But while it’s cheating in a technical sense, it doesn’t impact anyone and it’s teaching me a lot about how video games function, which I find more entertaining than completing hard-coded objectives. It’s the first game I ever put a lot of mods on, and between troubleshooting and testing stuff, it’s been nearly as illuminating as rendering lag that adds each texture layer individually starting from low poly (my ps4 is having some major lag issues I’m trying to sort out, and horizon zero dawn is fascinating for this rendering issue, so so many layers! And then to realize it usually gets processed in real time! 🤯)

As for cheating in multiplayer, it hasn’t come up in decades. WoW was the last multiplayer game I played, and I stopped that when whatever the third expansion was came out. So like 2010 or so?

Only if it's single player and there's some bullshit time consuming part I don't want to deal with or some bug fucks me over. I wouldn't in multiplayer. I can't even bring myself to murder people in arc raiders unless its self defense.

Depends on the game and platform really.

Been using game cheats since IDDQD and IDKFA. I've never used a cheat in a multiplayer competitive game, that's like cheating at golf. No one really cares what your fucking score is, and cheating ruins any and all accomplishment and personal validation from competing. At that point, you're just being an asshole to other people for imaginary clout, and you should really consider what is gratifying about playing in the first place.

I don't, because I find that as soon as I do, the game feels permanently pointless. It's like grinding to get some random chance item, and then someone gives you a magic menu enabling you to just put any items you want in your inventory whenever you want. Items mentally become zero value. And then any game mechanics built around scarcity and the intended emotional impact of that scarcity become permanently meaningless too.

It's pulling back the curtain. You can't unsee what's going on back there. Any further interaction with the game just leaves me feeling "this is just a video game, the rules are pointless and with that menu I can get it to do whatever". Even partial cheats, like infinite ammo with no reloading needed, break the illusion for me permanently and leave further gameplay even without cheats feeling unsatisfying and pointless.

For me, it's rare that a game can survive its mechanics or overall gameplay loop being destroyed by cheats when those are what make games...games. You're left with either a creative mode sandbox, or a movie, neither of which I care for in a video game format.

When an aspect of a game is ass (usually grinding, and I tend to be tolerant), even if I try to engage with it. Or if I'm about to drop the game anyway and cheats means seeing an ending. Last time I did was Megaman ZX, the game was already tedious and expects you to then also do a boss rush with limited ways to recover between fights, so I cheated infinite lives to get it over with.

single player games? yeah, especially if I've already beaten the game

other times I'm just skipping tedious grinding

definitely never in mp games

Sometimes. I tend to have quite hard lines about what feels like acceptable levels of cheating though.

To use Terraria as an example, I remember going mad searching for a lava charm, and I ended up using a map viewer to check whether my world actually had one. It didn't so I used a save editor to give me the charm. This part was a mistake, and felt like the kind of cheating that makes the game less fun in a slippery slope kind of way. I regretted what I did.

In future games, I would sometimes check to see if a Lava charm existed on my world if I had spent a while searching for it to no avail, and if there wasn't one, I'd try going to a different world. If there was one in my world, I'd try to not pay attention to where in my world the chest(s) with the lava charm(s) were (and in some cases, I'd get a friend to confirm whether one existed on my world, so I wouldn't even know the rough area where the chest was. Sometimes cheats can make the game more fun and engaging, if used wisely and in moderation.

On my old Pokémon games, sometimes, but say I am doing it on Blue, then on red I will use none. Sometimes I wanna walk through walls on my gameboy games. That's pretty much it. Unless you consider the old Halo 1 gernade jumps out of the map. Those were Hella fun

I cheat the fuck out of Skyrim. I add all my perk points bc I don't feel like grinding for 200 hours to get my build.

Cheating in first player games is perfectly fine.

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 consider cheat codes to be an accessibility tool for disabled gamers, and I think it is really sad that they are far less common than they once were, and it's even sadder to see some devs/publishers (Ubisoft comes to mind) try to monetize cheat codes.

Yeqh, I do cheat sometimes, especially in games with puzzles. I love strategy, but hate puzzles, so to have fun in games that have puzzles, I do cheat so I can enjoy the rest of the game. Also, in some games with RNG, I can avoid the worst results because I dont find luck enjoyable. I like to win or lose a game depending on my skills, so I dont find RNG enjoyable. But I might, at the same time, turn up the difficulty to compensate

Cheat to enjoy the game, not to win. Winning by cheating is no fun

I really find I can't cheat on an ongoing save even when I think most people would consider it completely justified, an example being when the medusa enemy was first added to terraria it was pretty buggy and could turn you to stone from off screen and through walls (despite explicit patch notes saying it should not do this) so I ended up losing all my gear to an objective bug. Tried save editing it back in but it still ruined the feeling of the save to me.

The only time I can cheat and not ruin my own fun is for testing purposes in games without any kind of creative mode, particularly 4X games which tend to be pretty long and I don't want to play a several hour game just to test a random theory about how 2 mechanics might interact in a lategame build.

No. I just don't enjoy it. I feel like i don't get anything out of it.

As long as no one else is being affected and my experience is being hampered I will

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.

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.

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

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.

Singleplayer do whatever you like, multiplayer do not cheat.

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.

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.

you can't cheat on a blow up doll. solo play is not cheating.

The point of games is to have fun, "cheats" are essentially just difficulty options.

It's only really cheating if you cheat someone else. The point of video games is fun and entertainment. If "cheating" improves that, have at 'er.

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.

Only single player games -- and usually only after they become monotonous playing the intended way.

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.

What do you define as cheating? Like I might look up a guide online, sometimes, but I never use mods or exploit bugs.

These days games often allow you to individually change the difficulty which I make use quite often when I feel a game is becoming too much of a hassle than a joy and I still want to know how the story continues or see what might be coming.

I don't think I have used a classic cheat in a long time. The last time I actively remember was The Sims 3 (I guess) and it kind of killed the game for me because suddenly everything was possible without any challenge and even a normal playthrough felt like I was missing something.

I save scum my rolls in BG3 to get desired outcomes

It's hard not to in 4 player GoldenEye :D