Gaming Cheats: What’s the Point?
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
If you are like me, you love video gaming. It is what made you buy your console — at great cost, I might add — no matter the format you chose. Be it Xbox or PlayStation, Wii or whatever, they don’t come cheap, especially in this economy.
So it is amazing to me when people cheat at the very thing they have paid so much for. What’s the point?
I’ve never cheated on a video game, except maybe to look up how to do something when I am stuck in a particular quest or task. I don’t like getting frustrated in games — it isn’t why I play them — I do it to relax and enjoy myself. So when I get stuck and have to repeatedly redo one thing, it gets old fast, and I will go to a great gaming site like gamefaqs.com to get help if it’s available. Sometimes it isn’t, of course; then I have to muster through or ask a friend if they have played the game too.
But when it comes to using glitches or buying something to get me leveled quickly? I don’t see the point. When someone does that, I have to ask: why are you playing the game at all? To me it makes no sense, because half the fun is accomplishing something within the game, be it a particularly hard boss you need to beat or just leveling up your character and finishing the game. That is what the game is truly about — not trying to look like something you are not.
A real problem
This issue is an old one in online games, from what I can surmise. I’ve never been truly involved in an online game like EVE Online or the many others that have had the same problem as I am now experiencing for the first time in my new game of choice.
The game I am currently attached to is Final Fantasy XIV. It’s a wonderful game, filled with a million things to do and accomplish: from becoming a variety of classes to creating things to sell as a crafter, there is so much to do in this game that I will never accomplish it all, and that is a good thing. Yet even here in this game filled with possibilities and an incredible amount of fun, there are people who cheat. In fact, there are hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands.
Each day, when I log in to play the game, I have to blacklist gil sellers. These are robot intruders that game cheats put into the game to sell illegal gil, the game’s currency, and also to sell the ability to become an instant level-fifty in anything you choose — without working for any of it. I have to blacklist about ten to twenty of these a day. It amazes me how fast they add new ones, even if you blacklist. Square Enix is doing their best to stop this practice, but the prospect of catching all of them is overwhelming, I’m sure.
These people are called RMT — or real money traders — because they sell these things for real-world money (usually around twenty dollars or so), and people have been buying from them. Hundreds are caught at this every week, and banned for life from the game. This includes not only the seller but also the buyers; if you are caught doing any of this, you’re out. So my question is this: is it worth it?
Not in my book, it isn’t. I’ve put a lot of effort into this game, and time as well. And that is the fun of it.
A typical message that is spammed
My biggest issue with all of this is that it disturbs the game’s balance by allowing people to craft or fight in dungeons and even Player vs. Player action with an unfair advantage. They can craft things worth a lot of gil, once they learn the ins and outs of it. At the other end of the spectrum are those who don’t have a clue what they are doing and spoil dungeons they are in for other players. There is nothing worse than going into a dungeon with people who don’t know what they are doing, and failing after working at it for an hour or more. Yes, this can happen even with people who have played the game fairly; not everyone is going to understand all of the requirements for their class choice. But it isn’t fair to those who have worked hard to accomplish things if you just bought your way in.
I can only hope that Square Enix finds a way to stop the incessant spamming we receive when entering each area of the game; it is annoying everyone who wishes to play undisturbed, so if these RMT think they are endearing themselves with this action, they are sadly mistaken. Everyone I play with is as annoyed as I am by people who want to cheat the game, though I believe they are really only cheating themselves of such a wonderful experience.
May 9th, 2014 by Burbie52 | 5 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
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Such a interesting article. FF11 online had Gil sellers and power leveling. need Gil? Buy it, Want level 50? A team will level up with you for a price. Is it fair? not even a little bit. What harm can it cause? it disrupts entire in world economies. So why do they do it? Why do people from 3rd world countries do this? It’s how they feed their families. it’s their job.
In FF11 where I spent 4 years playing we had to deal with RMT camping mobs. Mobs that dropped money and items that would be sold in a auction house. That Gil was then sold for real money and traded to players in world. i did research on the organised RMT and even talked to a few in world and it shocked me they do this ”work” to live. Well, a large majority of them do, not all. There are whole companies who sell Gold, Gil and other monetary items online. Developers are on to the scam and Square Enix has a very strong no cheat policy and bans thousands of players each month. Let me say that again. 5000 a month was not something they take lightly as far as banning gamers because those are subscriptions lost yet it has happened.
Other discussion have developers thinking about selling their own currency to deal with this while others actually program games to defeat the purpose of currency altogether.. So much to talk about here. In FF online you just need to farm and sell items, level up and you’ll have the gil needed. no need to buy gil ever. period. I had 500k from farming and selling silver from missions/quests and hardly even crafted to sell. Sqenix made FF14 fairly easy to get gil. RMT are a pain. Spam is so bad in 14.. block, report and go farm. thats what I did.
I have been playing this game for about 8 months now and have amassed a huge amount of gil by totally legal means. At first I did it by farming enemies and selling the loot I didn’t want or need, but now that I am crafting I am really making gil fast. Like I said, doing this is a lot of what make the game worthwhile, I am working my tail off but I get a real sense of accomplishment from it.
GTA Online has an interesting way of dealing with cheaters. They put them on a server together.
When the currency started to get unbalanced and then passed around like a virus. They banned the people passing it, and took all of the money other players had made from it. Interesting strategy.
I have never heard of people doing that to put food on their table before though. Maybe they should think about looking for the people who do the hacks for a living.
Great article Burbs. 8)
Such a great article Burbie,
This argument has been going on a very long time. Remember Game Shark for Nintendo and the PS1. you buy it and bango you have the ultimate weapon and the highest level or have the best gun and never run out of ammo.
What makes me cringe is the DLC trend from developers that offer better weapons for a price. Case and point Square Enix with the last 2 installments of FF13. Is it cheating when the establishment is doing it?
Saints row offer cheats as a DLC. They are the same cheats as you would expect to see if you entered a special combo on your joypad. You can also still purchase xploder game saves editor which although allows you to cheat and even reassign game saves to your account from another users game save. It only does it for single player games. Cheating is big business. A cheat video for GTA online will get hundreds of thousands of views. Which means the you tube user can then put ads on they videos etc. Do I agree with it. No. But it’s become a business in its own right and could even cause user numbers to increase. I’m sure theres quite a few regular home users that have access to stuff they shouldn’t have that probably wouldnt use home if they didn’t. Plus cheating using multiple accounts to cheat means users numbers get increased as well.