• Why Do People Cheat In Games To Play
• Why Do People Cheat In Games
• Why Do People Cheat In Games Free
• Why Do People Cheat In Games Online

Chances are, at some point or another you’ve run afoul of someone cheating in a FPS game. You can be having a great game, whether that’s finding the perfect loot for your loadout in Fortnite or having your strategy come together just right in Overwatch. Then, your game gets derailed as a player with superhuman abilities annihilates your team. It is frustrating, and often it’s down to people cheating in FPS games. Cheating is a problem in most online games, although the scale of the problem can vary. So why exactly do players do this?

Vonn Bell gets revenge on JuJu Smith-Schuster with nasty hit (Video). The topic question is why do PC gamers cheat, so an article on one million people modding their consoles to download modded games that you can play with legitimate users stands. To be honest, I thought this was fairly self explanatory. Not sure what it’s age has to do with anything, considering it’s just one of many examples. People are cheating by getting the solutions via internet cheat websites and using the solutions to solve the games very quickly. So back to my smiling and laughing to myself. If my first conclusion is indeed the correct one then I am in some fantastic company when I play Microsoft tournaments!

The easy answer would be to win. Nobody likes to lose, but most players don’t choose to go to extreme lengths to win. They’ll take a look at some guides, maybe in some games try to fix their settings, or look at how the best players of a game like CS: GO perform themselves for tips. Others though, type ‘X game cheats’ into Google and proceed to pay a little bit for access to an aimbot.

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.

You didn't grow.
You didn't improve.
You took a shortcut and gained nothing.

You experienced a hollow victory.
Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.

It's sad that you don't know the difference. https://t.co/upkhLSNQNO

— Fetusberry 「XXXVI™」Crunch (@Fetusberry) April 6, 2019

Taking a slight advantage in a single-player game that affects no one gets this type of reaction of players. So what about those who cheat in a way that ruins everyone’s fun? From the outside, it seems pointless. Letting a program rack up kills for you isn’t fun like playing the game yourself is. Any achievement is hollow. So….

Why Do People Cheat in FPS Games?

When you’re trying to figure out why players cheat in FPS games, you have two things to consider.

The first is the simple reason why they cheat. This is the rationale that they’ll give when questioned on it and what they use mainly as an excuse. Beyond that, the psychology that drives players to cheating in FPS can tell us a lot more than players might consciously be able to express. However, on the surface level, why do players start to cheat?

It Can be Fun

The simple explanation is for fun. Cheats have always been fun, especially if they involve giving every character a giant head. These harmless cheats aren’t what we’re talking about here though. Cheating to get a bit of enjoyment out of a single-player experience is fine, cheating against other players can actively ruin the experience of a lot of other people. So where’s the fun in that?

That fun might come from winning matches in games where the cheater is not at all skilled. It is fun to win and can be fun to know that you’ve won even if you haven’t actually earnt it. When cheaters have explained themselves though, there have been a few other explanations.

Leveling the Playing Field and Trolling

Trolling is a common excuse. Just doing it for the fun of annoying people. This is irritating behavior wherever you find it online. With cheating in FPS games though, trolling is going to come from spite or cynicism. Either they’re trolling to actively annoy the community of a game, or trolling because they’ve been beaten by cheaters too often themselves. Being beaten too many times by someone cheating in a FPS game might be enough to convince players to try out cheating software themselves.

Whether it is to win the game or just out of an empty feeling that the game is unwinnable anyway, cheating essentially lets the player put their own fun over the fun of everyone else who owns the game. So what leads to that disconnect? Why the lack of guilt in taking pleasure in other’s misfortune?

Photo by Alex Haney

The Psychology of Cheating in FPS Games

Since most people who use cheats in FPS games give a variety of different reasons, it is helpful to look at the psychology that actually pushes players to use cheats. When looking at this, studies have found that people see cheating in two ways. There is small bending of the rules that most people do fairly often and don’t feel too bad about.

This can escalate into larger cheating, in any area of life, which the vast majority of the population recognizes as completely unfair. However, the first type of cheating can make it easier to progress into the second. This is where serial cheating in FPS comes from. They broke the rules in a small way out of curiosity or frustration once, but it then became a regular thing.

Once a player has tried cheating once, doing so again can become a risk/reward thing. If they had a lot of fun cheating for the reasons above and faced no consequences, they’re more likely to do it again. Without any risk to punish cheaters, this can progress into cheating in FPS games whenever they play.

On top of this basic understanding of why people cheat, you have to consider the anonymity of people online. People have shown a greater tendency for bad behavior when they’re going to be anonymous. Online games provide a space to cheat with anonymity, it’s also part of the reason behind so many toxic players. The anonymity lowers the risk of something bad happening for cheating.

All this can make a player who cheats at a game once from frustration at other cheaters or boredom much more likely to continue to cheat in FPS games long term. So what’s the remedy here?

Why Do People Cheat In Games To Play

What Can Be Done About Cheating a FPS Game?

Anonymous online players will, one way or another, try out cheating eventually. If a game is a success, then a large enough player base is going to guarantee that someone tries to cheat. So what can be done to stop cheating in FPS games? There is the option of trying to avoid cheating from being physically possible or trying to address the risk-reward factor.

Trying to prevent cheats being possible isn’t really a permanent solution. The culture of modding games, mainly single-player, has made players quite skilled at producing these mods. They will eventually be distributed. While developers should actively peruse those sharing cheating tools online, it would be a difficult game of whack-a-mole to get them all. Games that work on ways to detect players using cheats and punish have a lot more success in rectifying the reasons why people cheat.

Can Cheating in FPS Games Be Stomped Out?

Banning players permanently from playing the game when they cheat puts a big risk on the behavior. It becomes less likely that a player is going to break those rules in the future, with a higher risk to the behavior than a reward. Removing the anonymity of players who cheat can also have a positive effect. It takes away that sense of untouchability with etiquette online that drives many people to behavior like cheating, which they otherwise wouldn’t do.

This isn’t going to stop cheating in FPS games forever. Some players will still see the fun of cheating as a greater reward than a ban from a game they might not have much interest in. Hard bans can punish players for cheating, but a small number of cheaters will likely continue to do so until they get banned. It might not be possible to eliminate cheating in FPS games overall. However, the right punishments and measures can help to cut it down to a manageable size. A game’s community that feels under siege by cheating just encourages more cheating. Whereas a game that actively punishes and peruses cheaters are going to have a more manageable problem.

If we look at the risk factor, pillorying cheaters publicly can be a very cruel bot effective way. We do know how the “mob” punishes people in the online world, if the same is done to cheaters self-censorship will kick in and people will be afraid to cheat because of the consequence.

Read next: The never-ending fight in tackling players’ toxic behavior

Do casinos cheat?

Let’s start with a quick sorting of definitions. If you merely say that cheating is being dishonest, then there are both honest and dishonest casinos. The honest casinos comply with regulations, file required reports, and train their employees to abide by the law. Once in a while an honest casino will arrest its own employees for cheating.

The dishonest casinos are intentionally breaking the law. Don’t expect them to file accurate regulatory reports or call the police when their employees do something wrong.

And yet some argue that because casinos only offer games that come with a “house edge”, a theoretical percentage that favors the house, they’re really cheating the players. This subjective point has been debated many times from many angles.

Are you merely paying for entertainment or are you throwing your money away?

Is it the casino’s fault if you have a gambling problem?

That doesn’t really address the question of whether a casino cheats.

Cheating versus Stacking the Odds

Although we usually say “odds” when thinking of probabilities, the gambling industry uses “odds” to refer to the amount of money a casino stakes against your wager. Say you lay down $100 on a single number on a roulette table. The casino offers 35-to-1 odds on European roulette. That’s a high payoff, but gambling math enthusiasts love to use roulette to demonstrate how the odds differ from the probabilities. You have a 1-in-37 chance of the roulette ball landing on that number.

In this game it’s clear that if everyone bets the same amount on a different number, and 36 players pace bets at the same time, then the casino is guaranteed to keep 1/36 of the wagers. 35 of the players will lose their money but 1 player wins back 34 times his original wager (plus the wager itself).

In this unlikely scenario two people win: the house and the lucky player.

So is the casino cheating the players or is it merely taking a statistical “fee” for running a fair game?

The odds are stacked in the casino’s favor, ever so slightly. If you feel that is cheating then the lesson to be learned here is to not play roulette.

But if you are okay with the casino taking enough money to pay its bills and make a profit, then may the odds be ever in your favor.

Cheating versus Bad Gambling

In a completely fair game of chance neither side has an advantage over the other. You’re both staking a wager on the unknown outcome of an event, like a sporting event or the spin of a slot machine. One player’s wager may be proportionately greater than the other. Ideally that higher stake is comparable to the likely outcome of the event.

Here’s an example:

How likely is it that you’ll get five of a kind in draw poker?

On a video poker game the casino pays a really high prize for five of a kind (in games that allow that result). It just doesn’t happen often.

Another tenet of fair gambling is that both players know what they are doing. When it comes to the general gambling population, casinos do often have an advantage. Either players are trying out new games whose rules are unfamiliar to them, or the players may be tired or inebriated

It doesn’t help that casinos create an environment that helps you forget the time or drift into a semi-mesmerized state of mind.

If a gambler is playing with impaired judgment the casino has an unfair advantage.

But the casinos argue they don’t force players to drink. Nor do they require you to gamble continuously.

While critics argue that the casinos create fantasy environments that lull the alert mind into a dull state, the casinos counter that argument by pointing out that players can leave at any time. The casinos also offer entertainment venues, dining and restroom facilities, and shops. Members are welcome to get up, walk around, and do something other than play games.

It’s up to you to decide how you spend your time in the casino.

On the other hand, the casino wants you to you to play games. They create an atmosphere that makes you feel comfortable while playing games. The casinos’ strategy is to remain just on the right side of the line versus cheating and benefiting from a player’s poor judgment.

Cheating versus Declared Theoretical Returns

Gambling writers devote many words to explaining and analyzing “theoretical return to player” and “house edge”. These are two sides of the same coin. When the math is done correctly, both percentages add up to about 100% (allowing for rounding errors).

What the house doesn’t keep is supposed to be reallocated to the players.

Through the years writers have discussed how much the percentages on slot games matter and whether casinos adjust them. On older, mechanical machines there was, in fact, a switch that floor managers could use to change the approximate theoretical return to players.

Modern games now rely on computer software that is burned into special chips. The chips have to be replaced or reprogrammed in order to change the theoretical return to player. All of these changes have to be made according to regulations set by government authorities.

In other words, floor managers no longer just “flip a switch”.

The problem with studying theoretical returns, however, is that they are based on probability distributions. Probability distributions only accurately depict the data against which they are calculated. That data either comes from past games (which do not predict future results) or from simulated games (which do not predict future results). When computed against enough data these probability distributions indicate about how much money the players should retain (altogether, and not allowing for putting wins back into games) and how much money the casinos should keep.

In reality, a probability model could (and probably will ) be wildly wrong over a short number of plays. The fact that a player takes his winnings and gambles them on future games also alters the distribution. A theoretical return to player or house edge assumes that every wager is a new stake. Few players use only fresh wagers; most of us roll our winnings over.

Given all these variables, why should a casino cheat if it already has a statistical edge not once but twice over?

The risk versus potential reward is awful.

Cheating versus House Rules and Terms of Service

Players may not realize it, but legitimate online casinos pay close attention to all the terms they ask players to agree to. When you join an online casino or any casino’s rewards program, you agree to follow certain rules. Players who just assume they know the rules may run afoul of them. These player mistakes sometimes lead to disagreements and complaints, especially when casinos withhold winnings.

It is the player’s responsibility to read the terms of use and all applicable rules. Some online casinos have been known to break up these player agreements, displaying them in different parts of their websites.

Here’s an example:

You may agree to one set of rules when you join a casino.

But when you enter a tournament or take advantage of a special promotion you may be required to agree to another set of rules (explicitly or implicitly) that only apply to that tournament or promotion.

If casinos make it hardfor players to piece together all the rules they agree to abide by, then there’s a fair argument for saying the casinos are giving themselves an unfair advantage. By the same token, some players are caught trying to cheat the casinos and then complain about forfeited winnings.

There may also be honest player mistakes that regrettably lead to forfeited winnings.

Here’s an example of that:

Suppose you use your brother’s credit card to make a deposit in an online casino account. That’s illegal. The practice violates guidelines published by legitimate online casinos. You’re required to make deposits from your own financial accounts. When a casino discovers a player made improper deposits, they will revoke the player’s membership, return the original deposit, and retain all winnings.

Cheating versus Changing the Rules of the Game

Casinos sometimes add their own “house rules” to the games they offer. A blackjack table may restrict the kinds of wagers that can be made, thus diminishing the expected return to player.

A new roulette game may also be brought in. Have you heard about Sands roulette? This variation on the classic game offers 3 green numbers instead of the 2 found in American roulette and the one green number found in European roulette.

The odds in Sands roulette are even worse for players than the odds in American roulette.

As long as the casinos display these new rules prominently, such that the players are aware they are participating in non-standard games, then it’s all on the player. If a casino obscures the fact that the rules are different then most, people would argue the casino is not being fair.

That’s a form of cheating. Whether it’s illegal depends on how the house obscures the rule change and what the local laws permit.

Rigged Games Do Exist

Make no mistake, though.

There are indeed some unscrupulous casinos out there.

Why Do People Cheat In Games

Illegal casinos can rig their games in various ways. Some online casinos steal the software used by other casinos and offer games without proper authorization from the game makers.

Can you trust these casinos to be fair and honest with you?

Why Do People Cheat In Games Free

Why don’t they just pay for the software and get legitimate online gaming licenses?

Illegal land-based casinos may use rigged roulette wheels, or they may employ dealers who don’t shuffle or deal cards properly. Once a casino operator decides to step outside the bounds of local laws there’s no knowing what they will do to their players. That is why law enforcement agencies in many jurisdictions work hard to crack down on illegal gambling operations. These guys are acting in bad faith from the very start and they most likely prey on people who are addicted to gambling.

Why Do People Cheat In Games Online

In a legitimate land-based casino the dealers are required to stand in certain positions and move their hands in ways that make it apparent to security officers they are following the rules. Customers may think these hand movements are odd at first, but once you understand the language of dealer movements you should feel reassured.

A legitimate online casino must have a gaming license from a government authority. You should be able to find who licensed the casino on their website; you can then verify the casino’s license is valid by checking with that gaming authority.

Also, as you load the games in your web browser, watch the address bar to see where the URLs point to. If you don’t recognize the domain name of the gaming server, you may have reason to suspect the software has been pirated.

You can compare how the same games are served through different online casinos to see if someone is using a different gaming server. Of course, some companies own multiple online gaming casinos so a little due diligence is required.

But this is why it’s important to check with online gambling forums for updates about which casinos may be cheats.

Conclusion

Every gambler eventually stops to wonder if they are being cheated by a casino.Although there are illegal casinos, any properly licensed casino that abides by regulations is generally trustworthy.

But like many other industries, the casinos do everything they can to help their customers spend more money (legally). Since the games are designed to ensure the house keeps at least some money over time, all the casino really needs to do is convince players to keep gambling.

Statistics does the rest.

Casinos are more likely to invest in developing a fun entertainment experience because they know that will pay for itself over time. Whether online or offline everything the casino does is designed to encourage you to play more. As long as the casino is obeying all applicable laws it doesn’t have to lie or intentionally mislead you.

So why do we gamble?

1. We get a thrill from the experience of taking a risk.
2. Because we enjoy doing things with our friends or even just amid crowds of strangers.
3. Because we might win more money than we risk.

The player who pays attention to everything the casino says and does is less likely to feel cheated or be cheated. The bottom line when it comes to gambling against the house is to always be at the top of your game.

So go easy on the alcohol, even if it’s provided to you “on the house”.