Cheating - Should you or shouldn't you?

Are cheats in a game really ruining the experience?

In this topic, I'm going to look at the pros and cons of cheating within a game, and whether its just 'a bit cheeky' or ruining the integrity of the game.

I'll start off with a good example of my own, the in-game editor featured within most iterations of the Football Manager series, which allows you to change pretty much any aspect of the game such as a giving your club £1 billion in the bank, to moving all of the stars of the world to your team. Now, this doesn't harm anyone as it is within in a single player game and the only person it would affect is me so I don't think it really makes a difference whether I chose to use it or not, if I'm enjoying the game then surely that is all that counts?

I suppose you could argue that by using the in-game editor, then I'm not playing the game 'properly' but I can give two responses to that: 1. It is a feature created by the developers to allow people that level of editing within a game, 2. It doesn't affect anyone else's game, so why does it matter if I want make Leeds United a great club once again (and that is an achievement in itself, even with cheats).

Another good example is the classic cheat codes found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I reckon most of us will probably still have the muscle memory to input at least one of the codes. A particular favourite of mine had to be pedestrians riot. These cheats were fun, let players run a little more rampant with unlimited weapons and generally enhance their own experience with the game. I will say that I do agree that using cheat codes within a single player environment should disable trophies, as it would create an unbalanced trophy/achievement system if some players got them through hard graft and some ran around in Daedric armour with every shout in the game...

Now for me, when cheating really isn't acceptable, is when it affects the enjoyment of a game for others, so naturally, this always occurs in the multiplayer environment. I'm all for being competitive and wanting to top any leaderboards, but using hacks and aimbots etc to win, then it isn't ok. If your actions cause someone else to not enjoy the game, then it is questionable whether you should be doing it (at the same time, people need to stop crying cheat when players are genuinely good at a game and just happen to spend a lot of time on it).

Its a tough ask for gaming companies to devise ways to stop people cheating in the online environments, as even the juggernauts such as Battlefield & Grand Theft Auto still struggle now. It would seem that the threat of a ban isn't the deterrent that they think it to be, in most cases they will just make another account and do it all again.

One of the more creative ways I've found to counteract those cheating in a game (or in this case, pirating) was Game Dev Tycoon. Rather fiendishly, anyone who had pirated a game would find their in-game company go bust due to pirates, which is a rather genius punishment.

The next issue that always arises - using a glitch in the game to win. Is that cheating? It is hard to say really, as the fault lies with the developer for that loophole being there in the first place for someone to use, and if anything should work quickly to close obvious gaps as they arise. This goes for speed runs as well - saying you completed a game in 3 hours when you glitched through all the walls and skipped 95% of the content, then I don't class that as a speed run, it's a nothing run. A speed-run to me would be seeing how quick someone could complete Skyrim without the aides of cheats and glitches.

For me, using cheats in your single player experience is absolutely fine, but keep it there. If you cheat online, you're only ruining the game for someone else and that's not right.

What are your thoughts on using cheats, whether its single player or multiplayer?
And what about using an in-game glitch to win?