A brief history of cheating in video games

Immediately since humanity began to play games, people have appeared, seeking to break the rules for the sake of victory. Whether it’s a cheating dice, counting cards or hitting a pinball machine, you can argue about anything: if there is a game with probabilities, then someone will surely try to pull the odds on their side.

In the modern era of online games and console gaming, the situation has not changed, and the most famous in the history of video games cheats are inserted by the developers themselves. “Konami Code” (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start) is probably the most popular cheat code in history. It was added to the 1985 Gradius for NES game by game developer Kazuisha Hashimoto, who discovered during the debugging phase that the game was too complicated.


"They put a lot of effort into testing," said Ste Ste Pickford, one of the developers of Solar Jetman , Plok and Equinox , in 2014, Red Bull . “In the era of 8-bit games, interfaces were usually very simple, no huge menu screens to which cheat lists could be added. Therefore, the front-end cheat code was often used by testers to quickly hit different parts of the game or test different functions. Some of them accidentally remained in release versions. ”

The ability to jump to almost any place of the game saved a lot of time during testing and debugging, which is why the level selection cheat appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog (hold A, press up, down, left, right, and press Start after the beep). In addition, such feature selection cheats, like the ABACABB code from Mortal Kombat , also served to turn on blood and meat.
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Such codes often had personal significance for developers. ABACABB is a tribute to the Phil Collins Genesis group, which had the same name as the Sega console [approx. Trans .: The Genesis group has an album called Abacab].

In addition, cheat codes could be useful for resumes. “We created great code at Ken Griffey presents Major League Baseball for SNES,” says Pickford. “The code carried the player from the screen saver straight to the end credits of the game. This allowed all employees of the development department to instantly prove that we worked on this game, because at that time the game creators did not often receive recognition. If I'm not mistaken, the code was „BADBUBBA“. "Bubba" is the school's nickname for the producer and designer of the game.


But in the working code of the game not only developers were rummaging. In the era of the Commodore 64 computers, the players themselves, before loading the program, inserted the POKE commands to access the contents of individual memory cells. The POKE team was present at the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. It allowed players to change different values ​​and improve their characteristics, to include protection against damage and otherwise modify the gameplay. For example, having entered the command “POKE 755, 4” on the 8-bit Atari system, we will give the graphic card an instruction to invert the entire screen text. Of course, finding the right memory cell was a trial and error process.

By the time the gaming market was captured by Nintendo with its NES console, these self-made modifications had already become a popular affair — players shared various exploits in offline gamers' clubs and through word of mouth.

Cheating on 8-bit systems eventually turned into a real commercial industry: Codemasters released the Game Genie cartridge, Datel released Action Replay, and Mad Catz released the GameShark. For example, the Game Genie device had versions for the Sega Genesis, NES, Super NES, and even portable systems such as Game Boy and Game Gear. After switching consoles to disk media, the GameShark and Code Breaker devices became popular.


In fact, such cheat systems were “POKE teams for dummies”. They worked in the same way as hand-typed POKEs — they accessed memory access and changed values ​​before launching the game, only had a graphical interface that inexperienced users could figure out. Such devices instantly became hits and contributed to the onset of the “golden age” of cheating.

By the mid-90s, cheating in video games became a real trend. Nintendo Power Magazine, which began publishing in 1988, was received with delight. The publication contained many tips and tricks on the passage of the most popular games, as well as news of the gaming industry. The Nintendo Power Line service, which was launched simultaneously with the magazine and worked until it was killed by the Internet in 2010, provided telephone assistance to professional gamers for gamers.

Tips and Tricks , first published in 1995, placed even more emphasis on various aspects of cheating. Everything was printed in it, from lists of popular codes to reviews of new POKE-cartridges. There was even a whole TV show dedicated to cheating in video games. Show Cheat! It was launched on the G4 cable network in 2002 and lasted until 2009, releasing as many as 174 episodes. Although none of these media exist anymore, their popularity has had a lasting effect on the industry because they performed the functions that the guide sites now provide on strategies, walkthroughs and tips.


Despite consoles taking over the market, PC game developers in the 1990s continued to embed codes in their products, saving time in testing. Take for example the 1996 Quake game. By pressing the "~" key in it, it was possible to open the developer console into which any codes modifying the game's behavior were entered. The console allows you to change the status of the player, switch between levels, pass through walls, fly and turn on god mode. In addition, any command could be tied to a keystroke and turned on instantly.

It is not surprising that this practice is used today. Developers during testing still need to get quick access to various parts and situations within the game, and enterprising players continue to look for shortcuts to victory. Doom (2016) for PC also has an equally wide list of cheat codes entered via the command line. By opening the developer console by pressing Ctrl + Alt + ~, players can turn on god mode, receive fully upgraded equipment and weapons, or open unexplored areas on a mission map. The same story with Fallout 4 for PC. Just press the "tilde" (~) and tear off in full .

Gradually, online games on consoles and PCs switched from split screen and LAN parties to the Internet, and cheats followed. And here the problems started. Cheating in a game of one or two players does not represent a serious problem. The worst thing that can happen is that the enemy or the game will call you a fraudster, like, for example, Super Mario 64 .


But when you start cheating in online games, this directly affects, and most often negatively, all other players in the match. Anyone who killed a camper with aimbot and wall hack in CounterStrike: Global Offensive can confirm this. Even the use of in-game glitches, for example, the Last Stand Grenade Trick in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, or disabling the router before losing the Starcraft game can ruin the game for other users.

A survey of Irdeto Global Gaming Survey conducted in 2018 among 9,436 users showed that 60 percent of respondents felt the negative impact of repeated meetings with cheaters. A survey among players from China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States also found that 77 percent of respondents would most likely end up playing online multiplayer if they suspect other players are cheating, and 48 percent said that less likely to buy in-game content.

And since the success of online games requires a large-scale and active user base, their developers cannot give freedom to a small group of cheaters that spoil the game for the main part of the community. Therefore, the game industry is constantly looking for ways to counter the influence of cheaters, and its methodology varies greatly depending on the games and platforms. Ban cheating players have long been a useful punishment for game developers, as are anti-cheat software like PunkBuster.


Developed by Even Balance Inc, the PunkBuster program is designed to detect the use of cheat software in online games. It was first released in 2000 for the game Half-Life . The PunkBuster client is launched locally in the player’s system and performs a real-time memory scan in search of known cheats, hacks, key settings or forbidden scripts, and the program servers request frequent status updates from all clients connected to them (including screenshots).

If a player is found to violate the rules, PunkBuster administrators can remove him from the game for a certain period of time or ban his GUID forever, which is tied to the license key of the game; therefore, to start playing again, the player will have to buy another copy of the game. Basically, PunkBuster is used in FPS and action games. This service is used by such franchises as Battlefield , Ghost Recon , Rainbow Six , Medal of Honor and CoD , as well as Assassin's Creed , FarCry 2 and 3 .

Anti-cheat systems also exist on the server side, and the most famous of them is FairFight. AAA studios such as EA, Crytek, PopCap, Dice and Ubisoft, as well as many indies, use middleware. Instead of being installed into the player’s system and constantly scanning for the presence of invalid third-party code, FairFight examines the player’s actions and compares them with “a variety of statistical markers to detect cheaters. FairFight cross-checks these indicators with server-side reporting tools and takes action if the results of both checks correlate with cheating, ”explained on the company's website. As soon as the system finds a probable cheat, admins can apply penalties of various degrees of severity - from a simple warning to an unconditional ban.

The Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system is not so indulgent. Her bans are given “forever, are not discussed and cannot be filmed by the Steam support team,” says the Steam support page.

This fully automated admin is on the server side and scans every player connecting to the Steam protected VAC server. “If a user connects to a secure VAC server from a computer on which defined cheats are installed, then the VAC system bans the player, prohibiting him to continue playing on servers protected by VAC”.


The moment when administrators # eXTREMESLAND2018 caught forsaken and he tried to remove the hack.

OpTic India's cyber sports team did not consider the presence of VAC at Extremesland Zowie Asia CS: GO 2018. During the $ 100,000 prize tournament , VAC caught Nikhil "forsaken" Kumawat from OpTic using a targetbot. Therefore, the team without ceremony was thrown out of the tournament, after which it had to be dissolved.

For ordinary cheaters this can be a serious problem. But for professional gamers, catching on cheating can be a disastrous end to a career. Recently, a Fortnite Damion “XXiF” Cook player was convinced of this. However, Cook did not expose the AI, but his own fans.

During the qualifying game to participate in the Fortnite World Cup with a $ 30 million prize, viewers noticed that Cook was making incredibly successful hits and suspected that this pro-gamer was conspiring with friends who allowed him to kill himself to get to the tournament. This kind of cheating, called "teaming", implies that solo players combine with each other to influence the outcome of an online game. Unfortunately for Epic Games, this behavior can in no way be automatically tracked, because cheaters just call up on the phone and coordinate their actions in real life.

Cheats are not always used to give players an unfair advantage over a computer or live opponents. Recently, the gaming industry has begun to make successful attempts to make games more inclusive and convenient for becoming more and more diverse and louder than announcing the player base . Therefore, developers often add “cheats” as “Easter eggs”, allowing to make the game more accessible (and more interesting) for casual players. Helper Mode, used in Super Mario Odyssey and Celeste , helps reduce the complexity of the gameplay by reducing or eliminating deadly hazards or increasing health parameters. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe there is a similar function: the game gives the player the ability to automatically control or accelerate. When used properly, such a function can make the race against young or less dexterous drivers more equal.

Of course, game manufacturers also see the source of profits in cheats. Instead of simply giving away bonuses or upgrades with the help of secret teams, publishers sell them, and players gladly buy them as DLC or in-game microtransactions. For example, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey provides players with an opportunity to increase the experience generation by 50 percent, but not by entering tricky commands, but only for 10 dollars .

Whether you use them or not, cheats remain an unavoidable aspect of modern games. They help developers to quickly test and debug programs, as well as support players who cannot cope with the complexity of the game.

Obviously, the behavior of such players as XXiF and forsaken is harmful, just like counting cards in poker is harmful or American football balls that are a bit deflated by the Patriots . There is cheating for fun, and there is a fraud to make money, and the second is definitely not worth doing. However, with prudent and balanced use, cheats can make games comfortable and fun for everyone.