The only thing close to cheat codes I’ve seen are the bonus modes you unlock in Uncharted, like Slow motion, and mirror mode. Which are not DLC.
Cheat codes were a byproduct of flimsier game development standards.
Main reason why game development times inflated so much were due to today’s gamers have higher standards when it comes to balancing. Some indies even have to rely on volunteer testers, just so they don’t get bomb threats from Asmonfan1488 due to not all weapons were perfectly balanced.
actually i think the standards have lowered, because there is an expectation that if a game is unbalanced, it will be fixed via a patch.
in the past if a game was going to be unbalanced it would always be unbalanced, and so the pressures were higher to get it right the first time.
its problem better to assume that the arms race in graphics and features is more to blame. yet with all that extra time and money indie games still rise above.
cheat code prevalence is fad that comes and goes.
No, games were still broken on arrival, they just were left broken (save for PC).
i mean now-a-days if your console game is broken on arrival and remains left broken, that is a direct choice to do so by the publisher or studio.
i know you still download updates every time you boot up the console, and then everytimr you start the game
Which I really hate, by the way. What even is the point in trying out different weapons, if you can’t find one that’s just stupidly overpowered?
No, you don’t understand, all assault rifles must match the power of each other, with slight variation in sound, firing rate, range, damage per hit, etc.!
A lot of cheat codes were back in yonder days for testers and Q&A. Need to check something on stage 9, instead of playing through the game use the code to jump there to test. Got stuck but need to test further, noclip to go through terrain then test again for replication purposes. They weren’t intended for us but were a very nice and welcome addition. Now they don’t have extensive Q&A anymore to need such.
They still have the QA stuff, it’s just done differently. An in-game terminal that’s disabled for the release build, for instance.
Also journalists, many of whom didn’t grow up with videogames.
Difficulty used to be seen as a way to adjust the play time, which was tied to the value proposition for the customer. A lot of older games used to have a gigantic difficulty spike 3 or 4 levels in specifically for rental markets. The Lion King and Battletoads are famous examples. The idea is you get the players hooked with a couple of reasonably challenging levels, then put in a wall that eats up the whole weekend they rented the game for so they want to rent it again next weekend to try to get past it.
If you give journalists cheat codes then they can go and get screenshots of the later levels and write about how cool they are, further incentivizing players to keep renting or jjsy buy the game outright and push past.
Didn’t consider it from that angle, I just know a lot of times it was Q&A testing tools.
So you’d go buy it.
They didn’t make any money if you rented it twice or 1000 times. If you finished the game in a weekend you’d never go buy it.
Yeah they fired all of qa now the engineers test their own code and everything is shitty
Also end game special objects.
Sometimes when you beat a game you get a special skin or object for a rerun.
Nowadays that’s a preorder-dlc.
Or worse, its a super hard to gain item… and after the first few people spend months earning it, which increases demand via jealousy and envy, THEN they release a paid dlc of the same damn thing with a different name, that the credit card warriors can purchase and have immediately.
Cheat codes were removed?
No longer produced, not removed from existing content. Very few games have cheat codes now. Only thing I can think of is Lego games via code, and even those cheats are available through progress in the game.
I kinda live in the gaming world and really can not confirm that supposed trend at all. You still have lots of games with cheats, dev consoles and all but the pc gamer part of me has other options in an case.
I wonder if GTA 6 will have cheat codes. They’ve been a big part of that franchise forever
The most devious of their schemes are the “skip the grind” kind of micro transactions. The sleaziness of making your game a slog just so you can sell the solution to the problem they created is diabolical.
The rich kid solution. Just SMH when I play against some super-low level player with all the skins and kit that normally take months to acquire - if they can even be earned in the first place, some items are cash only. Usually huge tryhards too with other “skill assists”.
This is the triumph of short-termism, they are urinating in their water supply, people will just stop playing. There are just so many other things to do, training people to hate games is probably bad practice for game manufacturers.
people will just stop playing
Not from what I’ve seen, sadly.
Lots do, but credit card warriors tend to be more active since they have FOMO and the whole idea of “I paid for all this, I’m losing money if I dont play!”
I remember star wars battlefront 2, which was remastered a few years ago, was the first game where I saw paid progression and loot boxes.
It’s more likely because cheat codes were development / QA tools to make testing the game easier. They got left in because they were behind hidden, strange button sequences etc, removing the code risked breaking something that would be harder to test without the codes, and they can be fun.
With better development tools, debuggers/profilers, and easier ways to distribute builds, they stopped being left in the game. And with the gamification from achievements/trophies, cheats would devalue/trivialise unlocking achievements etc and break their purpose.
Yeah, really need that sense of pride and accomplishment while we pay for another loot box
Not if it’s blood is smiley faces, you fall down you land on a roof, your head gets bigger, omg you can fly!, everyone has a clown nose, you reveal a hidden set of armor that has no actual stats but is purely for looks.
If it’s, it skips you ahead, defeats a part of the game, unlocks achievements and has an effect on the online servers then I understand not leaving them in. If it’s fun garbage Easter egg bullshit, then it should be left in.
The skins and p2w shit you get from micro transactions aren’t a fraction as cool as DK mode in Goldeneye or BIGDADDY in AoE.
And they forced you to be always online for verification so modders couldn’t do it for free.
Most cheat codes got removed because game devs got better at separating debug tooling from game logic, but especially because publishers and console verification are very strict about what games are allowed to ship with. Shipping with debug tooling is one of the easiest ways to fail validation.
What game are you playing that lets you buy cheats from their own store?
I thought about this the other day. We can only hope that genius people keep making ways to pirate games.
