While they’re less common nowadays, cheats have been a part of the video gaming experience for decades. In the 80s and 90s especially, it wasn’t uncommon for game developers to have built-in cheats that players could access with specific button inputs or using a certain password, and then there were hardware add-ons like Game Genie that gave gamers access to even more cheats. Asthings like achievementsand online gaming have become more popular, cheats have become less common, but there are still games that support them.
Spades Challenge conducted a study where it analyzed Google searches to figure out the games with the most cheaters. Spades Challenge discovered that the most popular game for cheats was, perhaps unsurprisingly,Grand Theft Auto 5, with 442,300 monthly searches for cheats.GTAappears on the top 10 list multiple times, withGrand Theft Auto: San Andreastaking third place andGrand Theft Auto: Vice Cityin 10th place.
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Considering how oldSan AndreasandVice Cityare, some may be confused about their inclusion on the list, but it’s worth pointing out that they recently had re-releases that could very well be causing people to search up cheats for the games. BothGrand Theft Auto: San AndreasandVice Citywere remastered as part ofGrand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, and while the collection earned negative reviews at launch, it seems theGTAname is enough to push units regardless.
Games With the Most Cheaters
In second place wasThe Sims 4with 358,400 monthly searches for cheats.Red Dead Redemption 2came in fifth with 39,300 monthly searches for cheats. The rest of the top 10 are mostly mobile games, withLittle Alchemyin fourth place,Wordscapesin sixth place,Scrabble Goin seventh place,Wheel of Fortunein eighth place, andLittle Alchemy 2taking the ninth place spot.
Cheating in single-player games is harmless and in some cases even encouraged - that’s why the developers put the cheats in the game, after all, to be exploited by players. However, cheating in online games is a big problem in the industry. It’s likely that there are more people searching up cheats foronline games likeCall of Duty: Warzone,Fortnite, and the like, but those kinds of “cheats” weren’t taken into account with the study.
Cheating in online games is a huge problem in the industry and has cost companies quite a bit of money. Cheating has potential to frustrate players and make them quit playing certain games, and so companies have had to developanti-cheat softwareto fight back. Cheaters and hackers often find ways around anti-cheat software, though, so it seems like it will be a never-ending battle for the online gaming space.
