Just a question.
I haven't used cheats in any game in a long time, don't think i used them on gog games yet.
But remember using some cheats on some games like the first Starcraft with broodwar for fun like units not getting any damage. Though i still beat it without cheats.

Also gta: san andreas had a fun cheat that when you use moon gravity and flying cars cheat and hit a 4 wheeler so it starts floating and when you enter it you can fly up without limits and then when you had enough jump from the vehichle and see how long you can fall.

Otherwise i try to beat the game first without cheats and then if there are any interesting or fun cheats i use them.
But do you use cheats before you finish the game as intended? Do you even use cheats?
Are there some gog games the cheats maybe don't work? Even though they previously worked in the non digital version.
I do at least download the cheatbook database to sometimes check what cheats exist in certain games i am playing.

In multiplayer games never, in single player games mostly no. I prefer to beat the challenge presented before me honestly. In this scenario, if I feel inclined to use cheats simply to beat a game, then the game is either poorly designed or I don't enjoy the gameplay loop enough to persist - so I stop playing it.

In other circumstances I am willing to use cheats, however; to avoid tedious grinding sections, to test things, etc; more simply put - to skip to the fun bit.
Some examples that come to mind would be building teams in unfair but fun games, utilising commands (i.e. cheats) for purposes such as construction in the Sims or testing mechanics or unit compositions in SKALD, and testing the viability of unit compositions in something with a certain degree of randomness and time wasted not doing so, like Battle Brothers.

If using outside tools constitute as cheating, effectively mods, then I will also have no qualms in using these if they enhance the gameplay in a meaningful way that doesn't harm the default experience, like TQVault for Titan Quest, which stores excess drops outside the game, alleviating the need to spawn an endless clutter of storage mule characters.

I'm of the general opinion, that cheating at anything, then makes whatever that is, hardly worth it.

But for sure there are exceptions, especially in games.

Some developers are anal about making a game hard, and as many have complained over the years, it can often be too hard.

Like most folk I imagine, I enjoy a real good challenge. But what I don't appreciate, is when it is that hard, that you no longer enjoy what you are doing. And so if something that is too hard is a stumbling block and you've given it a good go, then to cheat may be the next best option and your only way forward.

It must be remembered, certainly in the case of a game, that you may have paid a good amount for it, and so are entitled to enjoy it, despite how anal or arrogant some developers are.

Then I guess the next thing is cheating when it comes to multiplayer. I'm of a mixed mind about that too. It depends on the reason you would be cheating, because once again you have a right to enjoy your game. So you might be up against unfair or unbalanced odds. In any case, there are so many variables, because other gamers should be able to expect that those they are playing against aren't using cheats. Sometimes it gets though, that everyone thinks everyone else is cheating and so they do too.

What would be ideal in the case of multiplayer games, was if gamers were graded by AI and you only played with folk who are at a similar playing level as yourself. Then you could feel that cheats weren't needed ... perhaps.

But in my case, as I've gotten older, all the competitiveness has lost its purpose to me. It isn't too bad, if not taken seriously and so just done for laughs, and win or lose, you enjoy yourself.

Being competitive, is the way of the world. But honestly I often find it pointless ... but not always. If competition can drive innovation, then goodo. But if is just for making one feel superior, then stuff that.

Depends on the game. Outside of "cheaty cheats", some are simply fun, eg, Age of Empires "Change all birds into flying dogs" or "Baby on a tricycle with bazooka gun", Age of Mythology "Chicken Meteor God Power" or "Canadian Laser Bear", etc. Other times, being able to "warp" to an area (eg, "coc" in Elder Scrolls) is useful for testing mods, benchmarking, walkthrough creation assistance, etc, without necessarily "cheating".

Rarely. If so, then only temporarily to bybass aspects of a game I do not enjoy. Like, in recent memory:

- Played a Neverwinter Nights module in co-op and we got stuck because progress was dependent on finding secret doors (bad design, IMO), and neither one of our characters had invested in the Search skill. So I used a mod to max out my character's search skill, just so we could continue with the game. And it was still a pain in the ass to find the secret door we needed, even with the maxed out stat. I guess you could also say that I cheat in NWN by customizing the looks of my characters and items for free instead of trying to hunt down and buy the clothes dyes of my choice or spending resources on the lame crafting system. But that's purely cosmetic and it greatly improves my enjoyment of the game.

- Had to do a boss fight in Grounded, a game that's mostly about open world exploration, survival, crafting, and building, and I wouldn't have needed scripted boss fights on top of that - especially since that's something I've never really liked in the first place. Gave it an honest try but after a few rounds I realized that I was not having fun and that this wasn't what I was playing the game for. So I went into the awesome, detailed options menu and set enemy HPs to a tiny fraction of their default stat, so I could beat the boss in no time and then get on with the game (after setting the options back to default).

- Kept dying in a section in Bulletstorm, which was otherwise a very easy game on Normal, and the checkpoint was set so that I had to repeat the same easy stuff again and again just to get to the seemingly hard stuff and die another time. I did this for quite a while until I was fed up with the repetition. I didn't even understand why I was dying so quickly in this section, whether someone was firing from above or behind me or something (in this game you don't even have a hp bar, the screen just goes red after a few hits, but it's hard to tell how many bullets you can take). So I set the difficulty to Easy in order to get through this passage, then set it back to Normal afterwards. Granted, that probably doesn't count as cheating, officially, but it felt like it to me. It also degraded the whole playthrough to "Beat on Easy" just for that small instance, but luckily I don't really care about achievements anyway. What's a bit annoying though is that afterwards I understood what I had been doing wrong, and I would definitely have been able to manage on Normal, if I had realized this earlier. But it was hard to tell under stress, and the repetition was driving me nuts, so I don't regret not wasting any more time on it.

Some reasons I may cheat:
* To play around with a mechanic that isn't available immediately
* To test things (I really like to experiment, and cheats help here)
* To work around aspects of the game I dislike (I'm willing to cheat to trivialize an insta-fail stealth section, for example, or to fix poor leveling in Oblivion)
* In some cases, to translate a game from another language (usually Japanese) into English
* If the game has bugs that hinder my experience, maybe to fix them
* In at least one case, to make the game play more like its Japanese version
* Also, to make an otherwise non-viable build viable

(Note that I consider mods and romhacks to be cheating. On the other hand, I don't consider exploiting a glitch or design flaw to be cheating.) I'd argue that cheating in multiplayer is acceptable if it's OK with every player present. (Sometimes cheats can be used for a change of pace, or because the group of players finds it more fun with certain cheats enabled.)


Just remembered: I also cheated to kill the first boss of Bloodstained on Hard and Nightmare difficulty, because I find that boss to be rather unfair, particularly with the camera working differently in that fight. It also doesn't help that the boss comes before you get access to the systems that allow you to make things a little easier to deal with.

I don't play multiplayer games, so I wouldn't use a cheat for competiteve reasons.
For single player games I have used cheats either if I couldn't pass a stage in the game (either due to bad design, or due to my lack of ability...), or to make my life easier in a game!

Examples:
"I couldn't pass a stage in the game due to bad design": I remember that my copy of the very early version of Giants Citizen Kabuto, had a bug which didn't allow for a specific building of the opponent to be destroyed. So, I had used a cheat to make all stages (missions) available, to proceed to the next one.
"I couldn't pass a stage in the game due to my lack of ability": The last (deaded...) mission in Brood War of Starcraft.
"To make my life easier": The cheat to allow quick saves in Far Cry! I wish there was one for the Souls games too...!

Usually only technical or fun cheats. If I run into a problem that can be bypassed by a level select cheat for example. Or fun cheats after having finished the game normally (howdoyouturnthison). Or fiddling with gravity levels in Unreal Tournament 2004 so that falling 1mm instantly splatters you and forces your gibs through the floor because the collision detection can't keep up :P

No point really, in using cheaty cheats (immortality, infinite ammo etc.) right from the get-go. Somewhat defeats the point of playing the game in the first place Hope you realized that quick saving (quick loading specifically) in that game resets the enemy AI and can also break scripts (try loading during the helicopter fight).

If you load in the middle of combat, you are not getting the intended experience. That enemy on his way to flank you will forget everything the moment you load. The game really did not expect that functionality and it shows. It does not store AI states at all. In case of Far Cry, it's not only making your life easier, but also actively nerfing the AI. Unless you load only positions which are out of combat.

Usually I don't. Somehow this kills the fun for me.

Where possible, yes. Reality is hard enough, no need for artificial obstacles when it comes to escapism fantasies.

I will when I'm otherwise "done" with a game. E.g., I'd gladly cheat to finish the impossible (and not like any other) last boss of Blasphemous 2. I've already written the game off. The game designers screwed that one up (which should be no surprise because they already made other parts of the game super anti-player).

I readily cheat to eliminate grind. I prefer to have fun, which is not repetitively do the same thing over and over again for hours.

To complicate the topic: Many people consider "save scumming" to be cheating. You'll have to reflect upon that.

I *highly* dislike the use of the term "save scumming", like how it implies that saving (and loading) is somehow bad.

I would honestly like to see more roguelikes that don't have permadeath (or at least not in the default configuration) and that allow reloadable saves.

I don't. But I had a lot of fun in the old GTA games with cheats before. I remember most of the cheats for GTA: San Andres by heart :)

A funny story.. I told my friend about console commands in Skyrim, and he later said I ruined the game for him because it was too tempting to play with them. He made himself 10 meters tall, so he could kill everything in one hit, and jump from mountain to mountain.

Edit: JUGGYDANCESQUAD in Bloodrayne is essential for every playthrough ;)

Only for point and clickies with crap design & known dead-ends and even then i always feel like i've ruined the game even when it would be almost impossible not to cheat. That includes almost every early Sierra game.

Only if required to bypass a technical issue, like a mission in Settlers 4 refusing to complete, or a couple of levels in Magic Carpet that are impossible to finish because of bugs (there's another that was merely insanely hard, but that one I managed to beat on my own).