Almost never. I've stopped even changing difficulties for difficult boss fights. Gives me more satisfaction and makes me feel better at games than I actually am. If I die 24 times and manage to get it on the 25th, then at least I was actually able to do it eventually. Just more fun imo. No shame in it though, just a personal preference.

Mostly singleplayer, when I feel like I've completed the most that the game would offer. Sometimes save cheesing/rng manipulation if I can't get a certain thing to go my way, but not a lot.

On multiplayer, I did used to play anarchy minecraft servers (where cheats level the playing ground for everyone), but nothing that breaks that balance. Multiplayer is only fun when everyone has similar tools to you.

How else are we supposed to play DK Mode Slappers Only?

Not so much anymore because I haven't figured it out on my Steam Deck but ABSOLUTELY with PC games. Strictly a solo player though.

Last time I remember cheating in a game was giving myself infinite lives in Sonic Mania. The game is really fun, but I'm terrible at it and I hated having to restart from the beginning of act 1 when I was struggling with the boss. Got really bad with the final boss.

I am terrible at video games. I really struggle. Some sit in my library unless I turn on a cheat or two. I can get through stuff like horizon or cyberpunk no problem but the Main offender is fallout at the moment. All I really needed was unlimited carry weight. Oh, and my sibling and I used to cheat in age of empires and the sims all the time. (Rosebud anyone?) Never cheated in a pvp and I mildly chastise my acquaintance who does.

In survival crafting games I'll almost always make it easier on myself through the world settings or something. Getting rid of item and food decay, boosting XP gain, making sure I get 100+ of each resource anytime I go mining or whatever.

Enshrouded is a massive pain in the ass on normal settings, so I make it easier to explore, gather, and fight enemies. Otherwise it'd take me at least twice as long to get to where I'm at in the game, and that already took me over 100 hours.

Palworld I do all those things and increase pal spawn rate so there's always at least 5 pals in a group at any given time. It makes capturing them so much easier.

Idk the last time I actually "cheated" in a video game though. Maybe one of the Lego games?

Depends on the definition of cheating. Here are a couple of ways in which I "cheat":

I didn't have the skill to progress beyond 4BC in Dead Cells, so I downloaded someone else's save file with all items unlocked.

If I hit a wall in Silksong to the point that it starts to put me off the game, then I look up a walkthrough to see where the nearest undiscovered bench is or where to fine the thing I'm looking for.

For any game if I end too frustrated by a boss, I'll watch a YouTube video to learn the attack patterns and avoid repeatedly dying to learn them. This is especially true for roguelites where I may have to cross 3 levels to get to a possible chance at a boss, and then get killed.

In FTL I used to copy out the save files to allow me to save scum if I died. The game is a roguelite and doesn't allow loading saves in case of mistakes of death....so this is a workaround to save scum.

In single-player games I occasionally "lightly" cheat.

Using "infinite" mods or unlock "everything" mods just ruins all the fun for me.

But unlock a specific thing or get a small amount of rss type cheats that reduce grind I like.

Single player do whatever you like. Play your way. Example: the old DnD games like Neverwinter Nights and Baldurs Gate, I’d start a game by console commanding a Light/Lore (scholar iirc) ring and a stack of identify scrolls. Do what you like to remove the irritating part. Bag weight mods in Fallout, anyone?

Multiplayer, no, never.

You could argue that mod use is cheating, in the same sense that console commands are. That would mean almost everyone who has ever played Skyrim is a cheater alongside everyone who modded out Inquisition’s beige pajamas before BioWare added an alternative.

I always attempt to play a game the way the developers intended the first time through. If I decide to give it another playthrough and I don't want to put up with the extra grindy parts of the game, I'll look for legitimate cheats to help me fast-forward through the rough parts.

I mean "legitimate" as in, cheats the developers put in the game, not outside hacks or mods that alter the game itself. I'm not big on mods in general, and I don't usually use cheats, but I will in rare situations.

Back in the day, Warcraft III had cheats that let you power through each level with stuff like infinite resources, invulnerability, or just letting you automatically complete a level. I used those on recurring playthroughs because each level could easily take 30 mins to an hour to beat, and it was very grindy.

In Satisfactory, there's a cheat where you can add a single stack of a resource into the back of a factory cart, then deconstruct the cart. You'll get all the resources of the factory cart in your inventory, plus double the resource you put into the cart.

Do this dozens of times and you can exponentially grow resources without having to wait on factories to make them. I'm pretty sure the developers are aware of this "glitch" because it's never been patched out, even after a bunch of people started pointing it out on official Satisfactory forums.

I played hundreds of hours of the game and made some pretty massive continent-stretching factories. Upon building a new world, I started to implement this "strategy" to hurry up and acquire rare resources so I could get factories off the ground. Saved me from hundreds of hours of gameplay, waiting on production lines to make basic resources into more advanced resources so I could get to the next step.

A buddy of mine asked to be part of my Steam Family so he could have access to my 4,000+ game library. He regularly streams games online and figured it'd save him tons of money buying games to play.

But he's also completed all achievements on almost every game he's played on console and uses some website to automatically complete all the achievements for his Steam games, so he doesn't need to redo them on PC.

The thing about Steam Family is... if someone's caught cheating and earns a vac ban, the owner of the family account receives the ban, not the individual player. I told him I was worried that cheating of any kind might affect my immaculate record and/or library of games and he decided to just buy his own games instead of risking my account. Good friend; he didn't even argue. I was still willing to let him have access as long as he was careful, but he chose another route.

IDDQD, IDKFA, ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️B,A,Start, are the ones I know off the top of my head. Tons of people don't want to grind, just sandbox, so you get city and people sims with infinite cash codes.

I guess what I'm getting at is, if they weren't called cheat codes, would it even be considered cheating? Cheating usually involves someone being harmed or cheated out of something (money, love). Are there any victims in this case (strictly single player, of course)? I'd argue that you even lose out if you aren't using codes, cuz you might say 'fuck it', and just move on to another thing (like your Terraria example).

Heck, we might as well tie this up with something modern and political, like right to repair. If you bought the software, you should be free to manipulate it, all the way up to (but not including) distributing your version for money. Single player cheating is about as harmful as a nice masturbation sesh.

I played Saint's Row 4, does that count?

In single player games? Yeah.

Save editors for Mass Effect to unlock squad mates early for spoken lines that I would have never heard earlier, cheating in rare candies on emulated Pokémon games or making Pokémon shiny too.

I recall using something similar for Borderlands 2 circa 2012/2013 to get certain guns to drop with the right parts as well.

Not really. Taking away the challenge ruins the fun.

But I liked activating cheat codes in GTA: San Andreas. Spent many hours traveling around the map in a flying tank and causing random mayhem.

I had to cheat to get any fun at all out of Far Cry 6. Piece of shit game.

I'm strongly of the mindset that cheating only means taking a dishonest and unfair advantage over another person. Changing the rules of the game is not cheating, it's house ruling - in tabletop discussion, that's part of what we call Rule Zero. If I'm not in competition with another person, it's just playing by my own rules.

I remember one HL1 CS (Specialists Mod) LAN party I was in where we all turned on Matrix Vision and multiplied the slo-mo timer. It was great - utterly chaotic, but everything was equal.

So no, I don't cheat in games. I just play by my own rules as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. And if I do play multiplayer, I try to bring my house rules to them. I've never had any person accuse me of cheating when I ask about various options. TBH, the closest I come to cheating is turning on all of the assistive features - colorblind mode, target highlighting, auto target, sound notifications in minimaps, custom keybinds, and whatever else is in the menu. Everyone else can also choose to do that, and I'm just as happy if everyone I play with has those same things.

I remember trying a Game Shark on a few games back in high school, and what I found is that it made the games boring really fast.

More recently I tried applying cheats in Super Ghouls and Ghosts. I still didn't make it past the first level. 😭

Cheating instantly ruins every game for me

No point in playing anymore if I’m cheating. Can just do literally anything else in life instead

Single player after i've beat it a few times sure. Multiplayer no.

Multiplayer games are absolutely off limits cheating wise for me. HOWEVER... using trainers and mods and things like Cheat Engine in single player games is not only ok, but I often treat it like it's a mini game. Can I give myself an extra 100k gold? Hmm fire up CE and let's see :)

The immense thrill I get from reducing some horrible grind from hours to minutes is just huge fun. I'm basically a sandbox guy. GTA5 cheats, for example, have led to more unexpected sandbox fun than I could ever have imagined over the years.

Not using cheats in single player grindfests is like having a first class ticket on a plane but choosing to travel economy. I think it's basically that I don't like being told to grind for the sake of it or for some "moral" reason.

I love a FUN grind though. I've spent days in games like My Time At Portia just fishing for example. It comes down to this: If a grind is fun, I'll happily do it but if it's just like I'm a mouse being toyed with by some cat then hello God mode lol

Last time was in GTA 5 online, when it launched on pc, got some billions, all the things available and then stopped, never got banned, but forgot my password some years later.

The grind was too much, I never tried to instakill anyone, nor getting planes to harass other players, just wanted the grind to go away.

Edit: holy shit that was more than 10 years ago.

If save scumming counts as cheating, then yes. But otherwise, I've only ever used cheats in single player games and I really only use cheats if either the game sucks or the cheats I used didn't effect gameplay. Some of the times I remember using cheats are:

Using the "fixme" command in Morrowind because I got stuck somewhere.

Using various cheats in the GTA games, after I had already beaten the main story, just so I can cause some mayhem.

Using the "giveall" command in Doom because I installed a weapon mod that required it.

Using the free cam that built into some emulators.

I used to use save states in old video games that didn't have saving systems but I don't do this anymore. I just only play them until I get to a point I can't progress.

I think I remember using a cheat code to access unused content in at least one game, but I can't remember what game that was.

While I haven't played it yet, there is a PS2 (I think) game that requires using a cheat code to enable widescreen (or was it 720i, or maybe there was more than one game that did this, I can't actually remember now).

Whenever Skyrim would randomly crash and send me back to the dungeon as soon as I get to the boss, I use console commands. Other than that, flying, lightsabers, killer mushrooms, turning zombies in l4d to fall guy bean people, those are all fare game.