Video Games Cheats

Video game cheats give players an advantage beyond what’s available through normal gameplay. This can make a game easier to play or give the player a competitive edge over other players in multiplayer games. Cheaters either exploit an internal weakness in a game or use external tools designed specifically for cheating. This presents a significant challenge for game cyber security.

There’s cheating for harmless fun and then there’s the kind of gaming cheats that damage a game’s reputation, turn gamers off and drive away honest players. This can lead to a downward spiral for the entire industry, where the lack of player loyalty makes it difficult for developers to earn revenue through in-game purchases.

In order to hack a game, players must modify the memory addresses where important data is stored. This can include information like a player’s health, weapon ammunition, and other vital statistics. Tools like Cheat Engine allow players to scan for these important variables in the game’s memory and then change them. This can give the cheater an unfair advantage over their opponents or make a game impossible to beat without using a hack.

While research on the motivations behind cheating in video games is sparse, it’s clear that some people have a desire to gain an unfair advantage. These advantages can range from replenishing an in-game weapon’s ammunition to gaining access to secret areas in the game. More serious cheats can even alter the gameplay in a way that gives the user a new character or elevated level in a game.

The earliest video game cheats date back to the humble days of 8-bit electronics, when adventurous gamers used self-made cheat programs to overcome tough games. These third-party applications allowed users to manipulate the computer’s 8-bit hardware to change values in a game’s memory that represented statistics such as lives, health, and ammo. With a little knowledge of computers and the ability to execute POKE commands, these adventurers could literally change anything in a game.

Today’s video game cheats are more sophisticated than the simple programs of the ’80s, but the principle remains the same. These cheats are designed to bypass the protections of a game’s anti-cheat engine and exploit weaknesses in its code. They can even go beneath the operating system and target UEFI firmware to read and change data that would otherwise be unavailable to hackers.

While 76% of gamers surveyed indicated it was important to them that competitive online multiplayer games were secure against cheaters, the financial consequences of a poor game cyber security are severe. A game that suffers from frequent cheating loses user loyalty, driving off a large percentage of the gaming population. Honest players will simply move on to a game that doesn’t struggle with cheaters and has effective game cyber security. In the long run, this can put a game publisher out of business. This is why it’s so crucial that games develop robust anti-cheat solutions that can withstand the test of time and the latest hacking techniques.