Cheating in Counter-Strike: Encyclopedia II - Cheating in Counter-Strike - Why Counter-Strike players cheat

Cheating in Counter-Strike - Why Counter-Strike players cheat

There is a lot of speculation over what would incline a player, or a clan, to start cheating in a computer game that is presumably fun to play. One of the most often heard assumptions is that cheaters do it as a type of compensation for low self esteem. Cheaters often fall into one of the following group or will cheat for a mixture of these reasons:

These cheaters tend to be of low to middling skill, usually use publicly available hacks, and usually restrict themselves to public servers. They are not always experienced cheaters and will often give themselves away by moving in a way that shows their inexperience and lack of knowledge about the game despite appearing to be very skilled. Other inexperienced cheaters may give themselves away by using the cheat in a blatant fashion. It is believed by some that when the game went retail and new players started playing the game they clashed with veteran gamers who had more experience of Counter-Strike and other FPS games and that rather than dealing with being outclassed by the more experienced players by practicing, some of these new players resorting to cheating.

These cheaters tend to be above average skill level, unless facing people who play and win at Counter-Strike competitively, and feel the need to be at the top of the scoreboard at any cost. Also the advantages of having just a wallhack enables the above average skilled player to make clever tactical decisions to either engage in or avoid specific situations they would not have been aware of without a wallhack, as well as giving them the ability to shoot people the instant they come around the corner as opposed to the >100ms reaction time that is the theorectical limit of human reflexes. These types of players are the most insidious as they will actively engage in hiding their actual cheat usage by playing like a very good player for the most part, in the way they move around the map and when/where they look. Some people who do not cheat on LAN or when playing competitively, simply cheat on public servers to keep up their reputations and to avoid having to maintain the sort of concentration level required to get a high kill/death ratio as well as avoid being randomed. eg. Doing everything right and coming around a corner on an 18 player server, and running into all 9 players of the opposing team, who by rights should never have been there in the first place, is an example of randomness that competitive players like to avoid on public servers.

Disruptive cheaters are normally blatant in their approach, they will usually use their cheats in an obvious manner or readily admit that they are cheating with the sole aim of making other players' gaming experience miserable. These unruly cheaters sometimes band together in order to make their disruption more effective, one example of such a group is myg0t, who are hated by clean players as people who play only to ruin people's fun.

Counter-Strike is often played in competitive leagues and tournaments and over the last few years has been one of the most popular electronic sports. However, like all sport there is an element of cheating and when it is hard to verify cheating it becomes more common than usual. Those who cheat in competition sometimes do it to disrupt but others do it in order to win. Those who use it to win naturally try to avoid being caught leading to a less conspicuous style of cheating. Private cheats are therefore incredibly attractive to these cheaters for whom getting caught would be the end (or at least an extreme inconvenience). Although many online leagues are widely accepted to contain cheaters, most competitive gamers still claim it would be impossible or highly unlikely to cheat in a professional LAN environment.

Not to be confused with cheating in mainstream competition, there is known to be a small community of cheaters, who compete against other cheaters, the quality of the cheat being what decides the outcome of the match. Participants in this are usually cheat creators themselves who use the games to test out their own private hacks.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Why Counter-Strike players cheat", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki