Explain Like I'm Five

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ELI5: Why is cheating in online games seemingly so prevelant? (self.explainlikeimfive)

submitted 2 months ago by Mandy to c/[email protected]

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What do these people think they gain?

Whats the point?

Do they really just want to ruin stuff for everyone?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The other significant grouping I've run into are the ones that only cheat on PTW games, where they'll say that if you can pay your way to winning, the game is already a cheat. I actually agree with them, but I just refuse to play those games, even if they're otherwise very good. In theory, I would maybe cheat in those games if I knew for a fact everyone playing was cheating too.

I used to cheat in Need for Speed World. Almost everything worth getting was locked behind an extremely steep paywall ($15 for a car kinda paywall). I don't know why I played that game, but I loved it. I didn't cheat to win though. See, need for speed world was very poorly programmed. Badly enough that you couldn't tell when people were cheating because they would lag-port around due to shitty netcode and/or shitty servers (knowing the devs, probably both). There was a lot of car customization in the game, which is where my cheating came in. A number of body kits for the cars were normally sold in packs with a fancy spoiler for premium currency. However, iirc the kits themselves (minus the spoiler) were hidden but available for purchase with in-game cash if you knew the right memory values to edit/freeze (tricking the game into letting you buy one of the hidden body kits). As such, you could get most of the premium body kits for free and the devs didn't give a fuck.

Need For Speed World basically had whales, "cheaters" and cheaters.