While I can't say it's morally wrong, since being a moron is still a right allowed to people, I won't play with such retards. If you have to cheat to beat a game, then you should be doing something else, and if you're just trying to piss people off, then you should go play frogger on the highway.

snowplow:

Limos:

snowplow:
Morally wrong? No.

A really douche thing to do and you're a coward for stooping to using cheats to get an advantage? yes.

Seriously, I don't understand the reasoning behind it. Its like Olympians using drugs and hormones to get ahead, except they try to get the gold because that will likely be their main/only accomplishment in life.

Gamers just cheat to get high scores? Or annoy other players? I don't know. For me that's a sign of a weak personality.

What if the Olympian used durgs to get super speed but then used it to dick around during the race and then didn't actually finish? Does that still count?

And I don't do it JUST to annoy other players, I do it because when I started cheating hilarity ensues. And I so love it when hilarity ensues.

Well that's different from what I'm talking about. If you're just screwing around, then its fine. If its funny, even backstabbing can be okay.

But lets face it, most people don't dick around, they actually use cheats to get an advantage or to get angry responses from people. That makes you an ass, no other way around it.

I guess that makes me a singularly unharmful hacker. A benign tumor if you will.

heh, nice analogy. Yeah, cheating is pretty harmless if you never actually use it to get ahead. If it's a team game (thinking Counterstrike, since that's the one I've played the most) then you can still piss off your own teammates by screwing around, but for different reasons than cheating.

Wow, I love the premise of this topic.

Morals are individual. Euthanasia is morally wrong to me, but ok to others. So on that note:

I do find cheating in Multiplayer games morally wrong where it's intentional and planned. Typically cheating in a multiplayer computer game means it is planned, but when someone slaps my wii-mote out of my hand whilst playing Super Smash Bros, I'm not going to take offence to it =P

Of course, just because I find it morally wrong in general doesn't mean it doesn't make me laugh sometimes. Used to be a million cheats on GunZ, but I couldn't stop laughing at my friend when he did an invincibility hack after dying meaning his dead body ran around everywhere.

And I'm not a person who preaches their morals everywhere. Some people get far too serious about things (you should hear some people go on about abortion)

snowplow:
Morally wrong? No.

A really douche thing to do and you're a coward for stooping to using cheats to get an advantage? yes.

Seriously, I don't understand the reasoning behind it. Its like Olympians using drugs and hormones to get ahead, except they try to get the gold because that will likely be their main/only accomplishment in life.

Gamers just cheat to get high scores? Or annoy other players? I don't know. For me that's a sign of a weak personality.

Am I the only person who has ever wanted a toked-up olympics? I'd love to see the physical limits of the human being with augmentation. Could we start breaking 5 seconds on the 100metres?! Start lifting a full tonne on our own? The possibilities are almost endless.

Gitsnik:

snowplow:
Morally wrong? No.

A really douche thing to do and you're a coward for stooping to using cheats to get an advantage? yes.

Seriously, I don't understand the reasoning behind it. Its like Olympians using drugs and hormones to get ahead, except they try to get the gold because that will likely be their main/only accomplishment in life.

Gamers just cheat to get high scores? Or annoy other players? I don't know. For me that's a sign of a weak personality.

Am I the only person who has ever wanted a toked-up olympics? I'd love to see the physical limits of the human being with augmentation. Could we start breaking 5 seconds on the 100metres?! Start lifting a full tonne on our own? The possibilities are almost endless.

I say you have the olympics, and a random assortment of different drugs.

and then before each event, the competitors spin a lazy susan around with all the drugs on them, then randomly pick one of the cups, down the pills, and then they have to do the event with whatever drug that managed to pick up.

AgentCLXXXIII:
Cheating as in hacking? Yes.
"Cheating" as in finding a method that makes every situation conquerable? I think not...

The latter isn't really cheating, unless it falls into the realm of exploiting. i.e. Skywalking in Counter-Strike.

I believe it is. If you have to cheat in order to win an online match...it is no different from cheating during a poker game.

All right, here's how I see it. HACKING is tampering with a game or game console/pc in order to give yourself/your team an unfair advantage over other players. CHEATING is using a known or unknown in-game glitch or other exploit to influence the results of a game. All hacking is cheating, but not all cheating is hacking. Also, in my book you cant cheat/hack in a single player game or in games with nothing riding on them (ie, games full of your friends) because you don't affect anyone else. Then it's just moding or something.

I feel that ALL hacking is morally wrong. ALL hacking. All of it. There are a few instances when cheating is ok in my book and those are;
1: When one or more of your opponents are cheating or hacking themselves and you know a way to counter it using your own cheats/hacks.
2: If you're playing a ranked game and you encounter a alt account of a top player. Here, it is ok to do something like disconnecting or something else that renders the match null an void.
3: When someone on the other team uses an overpowered aspect of a game. By this I mean not something that you yourself think is overpowered, I mean something that that game's community AND its dev team think is overpowered. Something that has a nerf coming for it, but said nerf just isn't there yet. An example of this would be pre-patch mechapeedes in Command and Conquer 3 Kane's Wrath.

So, if you want to make yourself into a spinning ball of death in halo single player, be my guest. Just don't bring that shit into matchmaking.

EDIT: Mods are very different from hacking/cheating. Moding is changing an element or mechanic of a game for EVERYONE, not just your self/team. Moding is stuff like making the trees purple or making the plasma pistol spawn platforms.

Personally, I feel that if you have to resort to cheating as in hacking simply to win or get ahead, then you shouldn't be playing.
If you don't have the skill or ability to play online without having to resort to cheating, you shouldn't play online.
The only exemption I can think to this is hacking on MMORPG'ers to get armour or w/e(as in removing so of the un-neccessary grind), however I feel that if your going to do this, then you should sell those items at 50% of the normal price for them, as you have essentially ripped someone off by hacking in where they might have potentially trained.
This being said, I don't hack in any game(although I could if I wanted).

***

Cheating as in using guides so that you know the best way to do something, isn't wrong at all. Cheating as in using design flaws(such as glitching in SF(getting inside an supposedly solid object, therefore making you invincible to all bullets, while being able to fire normally yourself)), is wrong.
What gives you the right to have the advantage over someone else, just because of a poor game design?

Play with your skill, not with the code of the game.

Technically, it can't be morally wrong. At least not from the standpoint of the cheater, or else said cheater wouldn't be doing such. Morally wrong implies that the cheater has a set of morals which would prevent him/her from cheating. But, if the person decides to cheat, they are throwing away said morals, and so they do not a set of morals to judge whether it is right or wrong. If this is confusing or doesn't make sense to you, just remember that I am writing this at 3:30 in the morning and I'm trying to express my thoughts as best I can.

It makes sense Vallen, but don't most people make moral decisions based on the morals society has driven into them, as well as those we hold ourselves? Competition is based on fair play, isn't that why we look down on drug cheats in sports? (I'd give a better example, but I don't follow any sports to have one)

If someone chooses to flaunt these 'consensus gentium' morals, things like "don't trot down the street shooting people", or in less extreme cases, "don't cheat in a competition", can't we say that it is morally wrong?

Barring egoism, I can't think of any moral systems that would hold cheating as acceptable, and I at least don't really take egoism as a good system.

I wouldn't say morally it's wrong, in multiplayer games it's a really pointless thing to do.

I mean sure, if you're playing a strictly one player game and you feel like spoiling the experience for yourself (like everytime i play GTA, but i never play it properly anyway...)

But yeah, in multiplayer it goes without saying.
Not morally unacceptable, but definately socially.

When I was young, I used to cheat religiously. there almost wasn't a game I didn't cheat at. Now I feel dirty and unworthy of the title 'gamer' if i even use a simple cheat that doesn't help at all.

I'd say outside gaming it isn't it isn't bad. So long as no one is going to get hurt by it, I don't see a problem. If it gives me an advantage and no one cares, I'd probably cheat. Also, I some of my best moments in gaming on jak and daxter, ratchet and clank and GTA whilst cheating. It adds variety.

-Ricky

I wouldn't say it's morally wrong, I would say your a dick if you do it. :) Cheating in multiplayer is wrong though and game companies should make it impossible to cheat in multiplayer.

Cheating on-line by using hacks ans such? Most defiantly. Cheating is just fuct. Seeing through walls, infinite ammo, God Modes, and what not are the tools of a p*ssy gamer who has 0 skills! I laugh at people like that because obviously they NEED to cheat otherwise they would get their ass handed to them in a brown paper bag.

Providing that you've defined cheating as exploiting unintentional (and some intentional) glitches in the game as well as codes then yes, it's morally wrong. Unless the server was set up with cheating in mind. It's only morally wrong if it's breaking the rules of the current game.

EDIT: I should probably add that I mean in multiplayer. In singleplayer anything goes!

in proper multiplayer it's wrong... but in like custom games with your friends it's ok if you're just messing around...

I think it's wrong to hack in a multiplayer game if it gives you an unfair advantage, but if it just lets you look like a giant cat or something I don't really mind. If it's cheating in that you earned a cheat by playing the game, then no, you earned that, you should get to use it.

if your playing a game with friends and they all agree "ok, lets all use the ___ hack and the ___ bug/exploit next game" its cool, can spice up an otherwise boring game keep it from being dull. as long as everyone in the game agrees in advance and is aware of it. in competitions with money on the line... you may as well be mugging people with a knife or running one of those 3 card games. maybe as a handicap(if all players agree in advance) "ok, three year old sibling gets maphack, grandma you play normal and ill take 50% health on all units"

in 1p games it often ruins the fun... but w/e works, if a section is just too fucking hard due to a bug, or your stuck in a wall or something its absolutely nessicary, but it doesnt really effect other people, your free to do whatever you want to yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uqq6jkdtUI
^^^My friend made the video, many years ago.
Its hilarious to me though -- if you've played counterstrike, then I challenge you not to start laughing at 1:41.

I can see the appeal of cheating -- having seen videos of hackers owning people, I understand exactly why it occurs.

The problem, of course, is for the other players. If you're a nice person, you won't ruin everyone's experience to have your fun. Otherwise...

Cheating in and of itself isn't wrong in an absolute sense- it's not always wrong, or we wouldn't remember what IDDQD, IDKFA, IDCHOPPERS and IDSPISPOPD let you do in single-player Doom.
Cheating in a multiplayer game, however, is usually wrong inasmuch as it give you an unfair advantage (and this is the critical part) at the expense of someone's else's fun. Willfully or negligently inflicting unhappiness on another person is pretty much the essence of sin, in my view.

Cheating is not morally wrong, it doesn't really hurt anyone or cause trauma or harm. That being said cheating is annoying and takes the fun out of a serious game. I was playing COD4 once on a S&D server. It was an intense match and both teams were pretty even skill wise. Then some guy joins and starts wallhacking, winning his team the game. He said something like "hey, aren't you guys glad I joined your side?" he was immediately told to "get the fuck out of the server" by all of his teammates.

This just goes to prove that cheating is only fun for the cheater, and it ruins the game for everyone else. But if you think this qualifies as a moral wrong you probably need to step back a bit a realize it's all just a game. However, cheating is still a dick move. A dick move easily remedied by a swift application of the banhammer.

Btw, I define cheating as exploiting a glitch or hacking not using a built in game mechanic that's unbalanced or unfair. (that's just called "being cheap")

ElArabDeMagnifico:
I want to see the story of the 1 guy who voted "No".

It's probably something along the lines of, "If I can cheat, then you can cheat back. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep winning through cheating". I once played with a few people like that I was like, "Shut up". By cheating, you're eschewing the fundamentals of fair play and equal opportunity for victory and success set by the developers. You might as well just create a mod version of said game where you always win no matter what.

Russian Redneck:

ElArabDeMagnifico:
I want to see the story of the 1 guy who voted "No".

It's probably something along the lines of, "If I can cheat, then you can cheat back. Otherwise, I'm just going to keep winning through cheating". I once played with a few people like that I was like, "Shut up". By cheating, you're eschewing the fundamentals of fair play and equal opportunity for victory and success set by the developers. You might as well just create a mod version of said game where you always win no matter what.

Or that it might be impolite/discourteous, but certainly not morally wrong. I don't have the same obligation not to hack that I have to, say, not murder or steal.
I voted No.

Blackwingdragon:
I make multiplayer cheats for GRINDING MMORPGS only.
I wouldn't interfere in games like TF 2, COD 4 etc.
The thing is, games like Maple Story require you to be stupid, rich, or korean to avoid the grinding. So I just code some crap together to make the grinding either not happen or be far more bearable. I'm harming nobody in an MMORPG where my stats are my own.
At the same time if I made an aimbot for TF 2, obviously whomever was using it would ruin the fun for the victim, - so I don't.

It's a weird sense of thief's honor I suppose XD.

You could just, you know, not play boring MMOs.

For the record, I was the second one to vote 'no.' The irony being I have never actually cheated at a multiplayer game. I find it annoying, but it doesn't violate any moral precepts of mine when it's just a meaningless game. It does detract from the fun of the experience though, so I don't do it.

Morals are subjective, therefore your question is moot.

Uh. That just means it's a personal question, rather than one with a single true answer. He can still ask it, and expect an intelligent answer.

It's not morally wrong, as Not a Spy perfectly worded.

However, cheating in multiplayer games is not really polite. Although using game mechanics against others is not truly cheating in my eyes, that's just playing the game to its full potential and is available to everyone. Hacks, however, can not be exploited by everyone who has the game itself and therefore using them makes you a douche.