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?

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.

In single-player games only, and when I’m done with the main game as a way of enjoying the game a bit more on my own terms.

Only in the games where “victory” isn’t really the point, eg. Rimworld. I’m gonna turn a little bit of river into buildable land if it’d mean I have a better looking base.

I save scum my rolls in BG3 to get desired outcomes

Never in multi-player.

Single player very rarely. I dont like looking up guides either unless im absolutely stuck and ready to quit the game over it.

Im absolutely a person who does everything the hard way and looks down on anyone taking an easy road. To me it devalues people who actually do work hard (example, using auto tune/melodyne vs actually learning to sing. I dont care how transparent it is, its cheating and waters down the real talented singers out there).

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.

Finding cheat codes for Sega Genesis games was my introduction to the internet. It was so fun getting to tell other kids at school about cheat codes that you knew about for their games.

These days I don’t, mainly because they don’t seem to have them anymore, and also because if I’m not enjoying the game with its base mechanics I have plenty of other games in my backlog that I can check out instead.

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?

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).

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.

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? 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.

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.

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