The Definition of a Cheater

What is a cheater? According to Webster’s dictionary, a cheater is simply one who cheats. To cheat is to practice fraud or trickery OR to violate rules dishonestly. Pretty cut and clear, right?

Well, with online play and achievements, labeling one as a cheater has become a bit complex. With the advent of achievement boosting, online glitching and hardware modifications, the line of the standard for cheating is now being blurred as the standard for success/winning is being redefined by the day. So who is a cheater and who isn’t? Let’s dissect the main groups of “cheaters” and see if they truly deserve the label.

Category 1: Boosters
“Boosting” is the act of playing an online match with all gamers (on both sides) working towards achievements instead of playing the game the way the developers intended.
I personally can see why this would be considered wrong but cheating it isn’t. If an achievement reads “Get 10 kills in a custom match/private match or with ___ weapon” or something of that nature, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to knock out the achievements with friends. You are meeting the requirements for the chievo without any glitching of the system or by manipulating accidental errors in coding.
You followed the letter of the law to a T. We in America are truly a letter of the law society who are raised to know the importance of wording in legal documents, on homework assignments or in work correspondence. This mentality would obviously be in mind even without thinking about it. It is our second nature. No one is being harmed by boosting and this option is available to all gamers to perform at their discretion.
However, some developers still consider this cheating (such as Bungie) and they even police their online games to find data anomalies to punish the very people who payed for their game and funded thier resources which are used to abuse thier players who boost. If you don’t want them boosted or want players to go through online multiplayer, make it ranked and leave it be. Common sense should apply but sadly doesn’t.
Logically: Not cheating
In the eyes of developers: Cheating

Category 2: Glitches
“Glitching” is a practice where a player uses an error in the games coding to either unlock an achievement without actually meeting the requirements or to gain an unfair advantage in competitive multiplayer.
This would be in the vein of the L4D glitch where you only had to play one section of a campaign to get the beat it on expert achievement or Gears 2’s shotgun/shield combo glitch.
This really is hard to excuse on any level. You are using unintentional mistakes in the games architecture to gain achievements without even meeting basic criteria or youre getting a blatant competitive edge over other players. The achievement side of glitching is still somewhat common and understood by some but I believe pretty much all gamers can agree that in competitive matches its total BS.
From a developer standpoint, they continue to battle against glitches in the form of updates to eliminate them, as has been seen with Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare.
Logically: Cheating
In the eyes of developers: Cheating

Category 3: Modders
This is easily the most extreme of the three groups as this encompasses those gamers who use turbo controllers or modded 360’s to unlock achievements with little to no effort or to gain a monumental online advantage in terms of competitive multiplayer. If a weapons rate of fire is dictated by how fast you press the trigger and a player has a modded turbo controller, consider the match already lost to him as it will destroy players at a unprecedented rate. As for the hardware side, modded 360’s can harbor an untold amount of cheating with making games lag to their advantage or to tamper with the core game itself. Without a doubt cheating in the eyes of all. This is such hardcore cheating that MS itself will punish violators in their own way instead of a ban or exp loss from the developers of a game. This can even lead to the resetting of a gamertag to 0 GS and to be branded as a cheater.
Logically: Cheating
In the eyes of developers: Cheating

So here we have three distinct types of “cheaters”. Some who really aren’t cheating at all while others are blatantly redefining the word cheater. But what can be done to stop cheating with achievements or online play? Here are three basic ways developers can slow down or even stop cheating in its tracks.

1 – DONT MAKE ONLINE ACHIEVEMENTS
About half of the Xbox population does NOT subscribe to live. That means by having online achievements, 50% of your fanbase can’t even try to earn the achievements. If they get a free weekend pass or a month of gold, who can blame them for trying to get as many of those achievements as possible? Paying 50 a year PER TAG for online play is very controversial, as is forcing players to play your online modes for achievements.
Out of the remaining 50% of gamers that do subscribe to live, many don’t enjoy going into cut throat ranked matches but want to have the right to try and max out a game. Considering online achievements don’t logically fit in games (as their is no standard for skill required as every match is different given the map, the connection quality, the skill of the opponents, and the overall ratio of human error) keep achievements for offline play and keep the MP modes as a bastion for the competitive gamers only. Don’t try and force gamers to play modes they don’t like as this will foster negative feelings and the will to cheat to get it done with asap.

2 – Quality Assurance
Some games are just mad either in piss poor fashion or are so bugged it’s no surprise cheating is possible. Are you telling me Epic had NO idea of the MASSIVE amount of exploits in its online play? Did Bungie have NO IDEA that you can party up with 8 people and then just play your own match to earn achievements? Common sense along with some hard work could keep the possibility of foul play at a minimum and thus slow down the beast of “cheating”.

3 – NOTHING
Long story short, sometimes gamers will just find a shortcut, a glitch, or some kind of trick that was unintentional. Even with a lot of hardwork and  QA testing it still will be out there. The best thing to do is to just follow steps one and two to lessen the amount and handle the remaining legitimate cheaters on a case by cases basis.

I hope this inspired some thought on the average person’s concept of cheating and will bring about dialogue in regards to what is right and what is wrong in regards to online achievements, boosting, cheating, and glitching. Instead of mindless labels or simple standards, take a look at the situation and think it out as only sound minds and fair rules will make Live a great place for all.

Live and let game.

Originally post on GreenLightGamer

and Written by Impure King