Explain Like I'm Five

I hate cheating in general, however I do have a personal carve out…

Some single player games, like (yes I’m old) doom — I almost always play with a full load out IDDFA No one should be dropping a Space Marine with out full weapons and ammunition and armor.

But that’s it.

Anything else, the point is to learn and find all the stuff the designers want to to discover

Yeah, like the other person also mentioned Counter Strike has had a major cheating problem for two decades and it's still pretty bad today. Valorant is a very similar type of game: twitch shooter that needs fine motor skills and reaction time where one player can dominate an entire match. Valorant has a more intrusive anti-cheat and a lower ratio of cheaters but both game still have cheaters and cheats. People will pay large monthly fees for access to premium, not-yet-detected cheats to compete in competitive circuits.

What's distinct about twitch shooters is that the core gameplay is very simple (just click on everyone's head) but it can take thousands of hours to become really competitive at them. People who are not at the same level as their opponent may think they are cheating if they outskill them enough which leads to a feedback loop where new players feel like they need to cheat to be on equal footing because the other person HAS to be doing it too.

Players with a lot of hours can usually tell if someone is cheating with relatively high accuracy (except at very high skill levels where the cheaters are also incredibly good at the game) but newer players tend to consistently call cheats on players that are just better at the game. Competitive drive, lack of trust in other players playing fair and high skill ceilings all create the demand for cheats which in turn creates lucrative opportunities for cheat developers.

Ruining other people's fun is also another popular reason like you said but I would say most cheaters justify it to themselves in some way.

Oooh! I was just talking about this with my wife, who I met gaming online. We've had the conversation with each other, and other people a lot, including cheaters.

So, most of the cheaters I've known tend to look at it as entertainment rather than competing. It isn't that they want to beat other people, and think cheats are an acceptable way to do that. It's usually that, regardless of their skill, they get bored with the slower pace of play, but still want to play.

I'm not saying it makes sense, or is acceptable, but that's the most common explanation I've heard.

The next most common is the jerks. They do it either to mess with people, or to "troll" people that the cheaters think are too serious, or too invested or too "tryhard", or whatever the excuse is. That kind of cheater does indeed wnat to ruin things for other people.

The next one that I've run into enough is the nerds that are just looking for ways to cheat as a hobby. They're the ones that end up developing cheat tools, whether or not they let others use them. It's about figuring out the game, its code, and how to manipulate it. Those players tend to stop using cheats once they've done what they wanted.

The other significant grouping I've run into are the ones that only cheat on PTW games, where they'll say that if you can pay your way to winning, the game is already a cheat. I actually agree with them, but I just refuse to play those games, even if they're otherwise very good. In theory, I would maybe cheat in those games if I knew for a fact everyone playing was cheating too.

I've actually done that once, but on a private server where nobody could play without an invite. It was actually kinda fun running an over powered character by virtue of a ton of free "pots" that would buff you in both pvp and pve play. Everyone was juiced up and one-hitting each other. Wouldn't be fun all the time, but the free pots were only on weekends, and outright unavailable any other time.

And, I will sometimes run cheats in single player games for the same reason; it gives a different play experience that's fun as long as you can turn it on and off.

But you'd be surprised how many people in all of those groupings will cheat if they think there's other cheaters, no matter if there's proof or not.

People don't have the skill or don't want to put in the effort to do or get something so they cheat instead

Sometimes other people are cheating so they rage hack in response

And some people just like to make other people mad to laugh at them

Is it that prevalent? Seems like anti cheat works, at least I don't see much of it in the games I play. Are y'all seeing cheaters frequently? What games?