Cheating in video games involves a player of a video game creating an advantage beyond the bounds of normal gameplay, usually to make the game easier.

Typical cheats include advantages such as invulnerability ("God mode") or an infinite amount of some resource such as ammunition. Cheats may also create unusual or interesting effects which do not necessarily make the game easier to play, such as making enemies tougher, or giving characters (including enemies) different appearances, such as large heads. Cheats often take the form of 'secrets' placed by game developers, usually to reward dedicated players.

Cheats may be activated from within the game itself (a cheat code implemented by the original game developers); or created by third-party software (a game trainer) or hardware (a cheat cartridge).

History

Cheating in video games has existed for almost their entire history. The first cheat codes were put in place for play testing purposes. Playtesters had to rigorously test the mechanics of a game and introduced cheat codes to make this process easier. An early cheat code can be found in Manic Miner, where typing "6031769" (the phone number of the developer, Matthew Smith) enables the cheat mode.

Cheating on early home computers

In a computer game, all numerical values are stored 'as is' in memory. Gamers could literally reprogram a small part of the game before launching it. In the context of games for many 8-bit computers, it was a usual practice to load games into memory and, before launching them, modify specific memory addresses in order to cheat, getting an unlimited number of lives, immunity, invisibility, etc. Such modifications were performed through POKE sentences. The Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum also allowed players with the proper cartridges or Multiface add-on to freeze the running program, enter POKEs, and resume. Some games tried to detect the Multiface, and refused to load if it was present. The earliest models had no ability to "hide". Later revisions either included a switch, hid if you opened and closed the menu before loading the game, or automatically hid.

For instance, with "POKE 47196,201" in Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum, immunity is achieved. Magazines such as CRASH regularly featured lists of such POKE instructions for games. In order to find them a hacker had to interpret the machine code and locate the critical point where the number of lives is decreased, impacts detected, etc. Sometimes the term POKE was used with this specific meaning.

Early cheating was largely exploited by technology-orientated players due to the difficulty of early cheats. However, a cheat industry quickly emerged as gaming systems evolved, through the packaging and selling of cheating as a product. Cheat-enablers such as cheat books, game guides, cheat cartridges helped form a cheat industry and cemented cheating as part of gaming culture. Cheating was not universally accepted in early gaming however. Gaming magazine Amiga Power took a very strong opinion on cheating, condemning cheaters. They took the stance that cheating was not part of their philosophy of fairness. They also applied this in reverse; games should not be allowed to cheat the player, either.