8 videogames that insulted players for using cheats


Cheating sucks. It does. Thankfully, almost all modern games have ways of punishing those who break the rules to get an upper hand in games. Most of them will just ban players for bad behavior, but a few titles go above and beyond when it comes to making sure cheaters get what’s coming to them.

Here are 8 games that humiliated cheaters in ways that will make you smile.

Credit: Rockstar

GTA V

Rockstar knew that the fifth installment in super series Grand Theft Auto was going to be huge. Subsequently, they also knew that there would be a decent amount of players that would try to cheat. In order to combat this, Rockstar took precautions.

Early on in the game’s surprisingly long life (GTA V came out back in 2013), players found a bug that would let them take their upgraded cars from the single player campaign to online. When Rockstar found out about players exploiting a hole in their code, they left the bug there.

The only change they made was small, but hilarious. If a player exploited the bug, they would appear in the online in-game world with their car, only to have it explode immediately, killing them and permanently destroying their beloved vehicles.

Oh, and don’t forget about the dunce hats Rockstar would permanently glue to your head for leaving too many group missions and generally being a mean player in online play. They did that too.

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Credit: CD Projeckt Red

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Just like almost every game ever made, there was a bug (gasp) in The Witcher 3. Okay, there’s definitely more than just one, but there’s one in specific that caught the attention of CD Projeckt Red, the developers of the game. There was an exploit in the game that let players farm cows (in the sense of repeatedly killing for gold, not ACTUAL farming) non-stop to get rich by setting the in-game clock an hour forward over and over.

Just like Rockstar, CD Projeckt Red decided it would be better to humiliate the cheaters than just block their exploit. After a certain amount of cow kills and clock resets, a HUGE beast named God of the Cows would appear and beat the tar out of the player. If you were strong or wily enough, you could kill the demon, but another one would spawn immediately. An endless series of Cowzillas would fight you until you died.

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Credit: Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

THIEF!

Let’s go back in time for a moment. Back in the 2-D world of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, things were a little more simple than they are now. Sure, there weren’t any aimbots, but you could still cheat. When you entered a shop to stock up on precious supplies and upgrades, you could refuse to pay and just walk out with the items.

At first, it wouldn’t seem like there was any punishment for stealing. However, for the rest of the game, all of the NPCs would refer to you as thief instead of the name you had picked. That, and the next time you entered a shop, you’d be faced with a VERY angry shopkeeper.

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Credit: Daybreak Game Company

H1Z1

I’ve already wrote a bit about H1Z1’s downright hilarious cheaters punishments, but it was too good not to include in this list as well. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the game, it’s an online zombie survival shooter, and is pretty damn fun to play (especially the battle royale version, King of the Kill). However, just like in every other online game to ever exist, there were cheaters.

All of the cheaters that were caught by the developers were permanently banned- or at least they were banned until they made an apology video describing what they did wrong, why they did it, and that they are sorry and won’t ever cheat again. Very few actually did it, but the developers of H1Z1 followed through on their promise and lifted the players’ bans. However, what they didn’t tell those players was that they would post their apology videos on YouTube for the world to see. Absolute gold.

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Credit: EA Games

Titanfall

I love this one. Hats off to EA for finally, FINALLY doing something right (RIP Star Wars: Battlefront). As an avid online gamer, I’ve played against my fair share of cheaters- hackers in CS:GO, stream shadowing in League of Legends, DDOS attacks on Call of Duty. There’s nothing more than I hate more in the world than having to play against someone who doesn’t follow the rules.

Usually, the punishments for these kinds of cheaters is just a ban, but Titanfall went in completely different direction. Instead of kicking cheaters off of their servers, Titanfall sneakily matched cheaters with each other in online play, resulting in games filled with nothing but hackers. I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been. Karma delivered by EA. Sweet, sweet justice.

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Credit: Rare

Banjo-Kazooie

Cheating has evolved over the years for sure. Back in the days of Banjo-Kazooie, overblown DDOS attacks didn’t exist and 12 year old kids who got their hands on the newest FPS had to tell you they banged your mom to your face. Ah, simpler times. Cheating back then was based mostly around cheat codes.

Developers had no problem with some cheat codes, but others were seen as just unfair, a punch in the face to the hard work of the devs. If you used too many of these bad codes in Banjo-Kazooie, the game would give you a warning, telling you to stop using those codes or there would be consequences. If you didn’t listen, all your save files would be annihilated. Brutal, but completely reasonable.

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Credit: Rare

Donkey Kong 64

Donkey Kong 64’s punishment may be even more brutal than Banjo-Kazooie’s. When Donkey Kong 64 was released, tampering with games to adjust in game stats was a pretty common thing to do. Knowing that this would happen, Rare took steps to make sure that people that went out of their way to cheat in this game would face the consequences.

If you “broke” the game by giving yourself unlimited health or bananas or anything else you could think of, the game would break itself. If you tried anything fishy, the game would make it so you couldn’t pick up any items or collectibles, and, even worse, Donkey Kong would become so fragile that any hit from any enemy or environmental feature would kill him. The game would become nearly impossible to beat, and there was no way to change it back.

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Credit: THQ

Super Monkey Ball Jr


The Konami code is one of the most well-known cheats of all time. The input combination (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A) was a cheat code that would provide varied types of bonuses or boosts in different games. It works on most Konami arcade cabinets and many console games (from different developers too).

However, developers pulled the rug out from underneath gamers who tried to get an upper hand in Super Monkey Ball Jr. Instead of providing a helpful in-game boost, inputting the Konami code would get gamers nothing but a return to the title screen. However, the title screen had a minor change. Instead of saying Super Monkey Ball Jr inside the series trademark Monkey Balls, it said Super Nice Try, a blatant middle finger to the gamer who tried to use the Konami code.