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Should Game Developers Allow Us to Cheat?

Should Game Developers Allow Us to Cheat?

I’ve been playing Evolve a lot recently, and there are some things that really annoy me about that game. After every game you are supposed to see your average performance, as compared to the global average among all players. Unfortunately, enough people cheat at the game to have totally rendered this statistic unusable. According to the, the global average for damage hovers in the double digits, whereas actual averages find themselves somewhere in the thousands. This is because several users decided to build their levels by reporting “fake” games with a winner and a loser but with no damage dealt.

This really annoys me, and I personally wish that the Evolve team would sift through the cheated stats and delete them in order to make this functionality useful again. But then I noticed the new Evolve: Hunters Quest app, which is being advertised once every three loading screens. This app is a match three game like Candy Crush , but with one important distinction. Completing levels and earning “mastery points” in the game allows you to earn mastery points in Evolve . Essentially, you can level up characters’ weapons without actually having to play the game.

On one hand, I don’t suppose I mind having an extra way to earn levels and items in a game like this, especially when that way is an easy to ignore match three game that I can play during commutes and long trips. On the other hand, I was able to get halfway toward unlocking a new weapon tier in just one match three game, which took 5 minutes at best. Getting that far in actual Evolve would take me hours, depending on what challenge I needed to complete. It felt an awful lot like cheating.

Could it be argued that this app, which of course asks you to spend a whole lot of money on microtransactions, is letting me cheat? Or is this part of the game? If it is part of the game, then does that mean it’s just part of the game that not everyone has access to (as not everyone has a My2K account or a smartphone). Does that make it fundamentally unbalanced?

Should Game Developers Allow Us to Cheat?

I’m of two minds about this app. On one hand, it’s a nice little diversion, but on the other hand it essentially lets you funnel real life money into in-game power in Evolve , through a convoluted way of buying currency in the app, using the currency to get mastery points, and then using those mastery points on your Evolve characters from the app. To me, that’s the worst kind of cheating – paying real life money for in-game power.

At the same time, I kind of miss cheat codes. I miss summoning tanks in Grand Theft Auto . I miss pressing a button sequence and suddenly getting a ton of cash or experience in my favorite RPG. I miss being able to moon jump or have infinite invincibility. Arguably the age of the Game Genie was one of the most fun ages of games, and if it weren’t for the ability to cheat, we wouldn’t even have things like Project M , the tournament ready Smash Bros. Brawl mod.

This makes me wonder, what are the boundaries of cheating? Does the new Evolve app really hurt anyone, or does it just allow a chosen few to skip a grind? Are cheats permissible as long as they don’t affect another player?

Personally, I’m not sure. Let us know what you think in the comments.

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