Odd take.
I can’t think of a single thing that used to be a cheat code that is now a microtransaction.
Want easy mode? It’s now a menu. Infinite lives are the default. Immortality modes and slow motion aiming are often under accessibility options.
None of these can be purchased.
Old games had cheats because they were hard as nails, and a game where you can’t get past the second level wasn’t going to hold a kid’s interest for long.
Play a mobile game like candy crush or whatever, a sports game like 2k, etc and you’ll that op has a point.
I don’t think I ever even got a quarter of the way through new Zealand story.
I’m pretty sure I beat the first boss (the whale) without cheating. Anything past that wasn’t happening with my skills.
Is this r/im14andthisisdeep from 2011?
It’s a shower thought. Pretty heavy judgement for something people supposedly just think about when they have nothing better to do.
Uhh, that doesn’t add up. Cheat codes started getting used less, as far back as the PS1 generation - long before dlc existed. It was a pretty rapid shift from that point on.
It’s weird hearing incorrect things about history from people who were evidently not born yet, when I was there. How do I go back?
Cheat codes were a debugging tool.
As development tools got better, they became obsolete.
No, cheat codes as debugging tools is like 25% of the story at best. That may be how they got their start, but it completely misses how they were very much a wider cultural phenomenon for some time.
In 007 there’s a cheat to make everyone’s heads comically bigger. In Tomb Raider, entering a cheat input incorrectly causes Lara to explode. In Heretic, if you enter cheats from Doom you’ll get the opposite of the intended effect. In Gauntlet: Dark Legacy there is an entire litany of secret character models you can play as, if you choose the right character and give them the right name. There’s a cheat that turns Banjo-Kazooie into a washing machine. Another one that initiates a zombie mode in Scott Pilgrim. There was a golfing game where hitting the ball 100 times and then inputting a shortened version of the Konami code generated a completely different Fantasy Zone minigame.
Do those sound like helpful debugging tools?
There was a time when entire websites were devoted to cheat codes and easter eggs (of course the most enduring ones were the broader sites that included whole walkthroughs like GameFAQs), and entire books would be published just for cheat codes.
Ultimately cheat codes were far more about easter eggs and unique game experiences than they were for debugging purposes - especially since as plenty of people have already pointed out, it wasn’t long before better debugging tools were invented anyway.
The end of the day it was just a trend. People had interest in these things, then interest subsided.
IDK man, console access and cheats are still pretty common for PC games. Although there are exceptions too, at least one game series I know, first few titles had console access and cheats, then they removed it after they stupidly left DLC content accessible through console commands in the base game… Which is pretty much an example of what OP claimed. So maybe it’s not always the reason, but it sure is sometimes.
Which game was this?
Some later part of the Risen RPG series IIRC.
I thought cheat codes were there originally for debugging and playtesting
That’s what I heard and it made sense. You didn’t want the developer or tester to have to progress normally to test things.
But I guess now we have better debug tools, and release builds vs debug builds. Because resource isn’t a problem and we can insert all those extra info on debug build
The first time I ever paid for access to cheat codes was in 1990.
Provide examples if that is the case.
Cheat codes were originally for testing and, occasionally, for fun. Sometimes they became Easter eggs. I can’t think of a single game where your assertion is true today or in the past.
The gaming industry didn’t remove content from games because it takes too long to develop, they removed it so they could sell us DLC and a half finished game.
Quality shower thought
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.
We were never meant to have cheat codes at all.
They removed them because they have the technical ability to do so (due to game engines, ease of testing, etc.)
Its ok to be stupid sometimes op.
The market is flooded w more games than ever…and there’s a brazillion games that dont do this.
Stop playing NBA 2k trash. Start playing indie trash at least.
This is the era where there’s more amateur smut than ever before. Learn to enjoy life. Even a cuck like u can find something good.
I mean you’re right but you don’t have to be mean about it.
There’s a big difference between cheat codes and paid stuff for whales.
I am gonna bet somehow epistein is involved
I thought it was because everything is a PC game ported to console. No reason to dev what modders do for free.
