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Cheats On The Internet For Computer Games

Cheats have been around since the first computer games were introduced. They mainly serve as shortcuts for programmers and testers to jump to a specific point of the game where some corrections may be necessary, or to try out one specific function of the game, while eliminating other distractions.

There are basically two types of cheats for computer games. The simple ones that can be typed/activated within the game, without making any modifications to game files, and the more advanced ones that are small programs (called trainers), run simultaneously with the game they make cheating possible by modifying game data on the hard drive or in the memory. Before the golden age of the Internet, these cheat codes were spread peer-to-peer on floppy discs or pieces of paper, but also some huge databases were built with a simple program that served as a search engine. One such database was The Cheat Machine, first released for DOS with a very simple user interface:

Not much changed after that, today’s graphical user interface database programs have almost the same functions, but of course they look much better. With the ever increasing number of computer games, the cheat codes and trainer programs also had to keep up, so they moved to the internet, rather than circulating on floppy or compact discs. These are much more advanced than the old cheats, many include step-by-step instructions for most games and even videos that show how to complete the game from the beginning to end.

Of course these cheats and trainers are immoral at best, but the worst effect they have is that they make gamers lazy. By having all solutions delivered to the gamer, he will only play to see some cool stuff, without improving his gaming skill at all. Most parents don’t realize this, but games actually help kids develop most intellectual skills at an early age, if they make an effort to do all the guess-work themselves. Cheats ruin the educational effect while the children’s morality is also affected. They may come to the conclusion that cheating is ok, and they will search to do so in real life too.
A trainer for one of the popular Need for Speed series games looks like this:

It has to be started parallel with the game, so it can modify many environmental rules and laws like gravity, acceleration …etc. making the game less realistic and easier to play. Some might say that these cheats have a positive side too, by using cheats kids spend less time in front of the computer because they finish games much faster, but this is a very short-sighted way of looking at the problem. There is of course a darker side of cheats that parents should know about. When they are used in multiplayer games it can lead to violent conflicts between players. Some recent fights that resulted from using multiplayer cheats lead to hospitalizations or even worse, death.