When the game becomes too tedious for its own good or otherwise bugs out (Morrowind, Oblivion).

When the game isn't designed around its higher difficulties (Soldier of Fortune II, Medal of Honor).

When I realize I'm actually no good at strategizing and decide to just cheat (Civ IV mostly, other grand strategy games).

When I want to just dick around with the game.

So yes, I do cheat under certain circumstances, but I try to play the games legitimately where I can.

You're right. I should have made that distinction between cheating, "giving oneself an unintended advantage" and cheats, " (collectively) altering the rules of the game and how it can be played".

Only in singleplayer and only after i've beaten the game the 1st time

Mortal kombat 2 on gog the ai cheats by reading my movements so i had to use the unlimited credits to beat a game with a character. But the annoying part i need to use the cheat everytime i enter the game and even slow down the cpu cycles to properly enter the cheat. And Kintaro is kinda too hard to beat sometimes.
Save scumming in video games i don't mind.
It's like saving my time with saving giving me several options to decide.

Yes, situational.
In Re-Volt, I will use the Carnival, Tracker, and Changeling cheats in solo stuff because it's a lot more fun than chasing stars down in the stunt course or the practice tracks.

I don't use cheats to complete a game.

But I appreciate it when games come with cheats to do cool, crazy stuff, and cheats that skip stuff and move you around are also useful. Sadly they were the first victim of microtransactions.

I didn't. But then, I didn't beat it with cheats either :D I always got bored at some point, usually when I had to play as the Zerg. But RTSes were the games I used cheats for most often. It's a genre I was never very good at, so to get anywhere with the more difficult stuff I would often resort to cheats. There were some easier ones, like Star Trek Armada or even Spellforce 2, that I managed without cheating, but most often it's a genre that seems designed with the assumption the player is willing to restart missions multiple times (and I'm not, I hate repetition) and wants to "get good" more then they want to just see the end of the story, which is all I'm usually interested in.

My reflection is: fluff those people.

Saving doesn't change what you do, or how difficult it is, it just means you don't have to waste your time re-doing the same thing over and over to get to the part where you failed the last time.

Anyway, for me nothing the game in its unaltered form allows for is cheating.

Depends on the game, actually. I think it's sad that some developers think it's heresy or dumb to include cheats but they most certainly have a purpose; giving another way to reach something or just to have fun instead of just throwing the game out.

I use them all the time in games like Carmageddon (this game has some of the best cheat codes, like mooseonthelooseand russformario), Prey, Doom, StarCraft, Hexen, Unreal, Crysis, and Bulletstorm, and I'm having such a blast.

Prefer cheats like no ammo limit or no weapon limit and noclip/fly over god unless I absolutely need it, though in Skyrim/Enderal I sometimes use tgm to allow running to nearest shop if I have too much in my inventory. Or I sometimes use a savegame editor for Dune II, Fallout and SpaceHaven.

Same goes for flying in Satisfactory and the earlynanobots mod in Factorio, if you want to call that a cheat...

Before internet came along my buddies and I was playing DIG or these old Sierra Quest games and often had to rely on friends, or older ones in our school usually a brother or sister who already had beaten them, or magazines for how to progress. And we even had trainerz in those days, shared just like a shareware via disks or cds. Fun times. :D

.dnkroz

EDIT: One of the more annoying mechanics in games are seemingly unbeatable courses like the racing in original Mafia or certain time limits where you either can't make it after several trials or just wanting to explore the area more, are things I always "skip" if I can.

I play games however they are the most fun *shrug*

Right now in Baldurs Gate (1998 original), I have fixed Minsc and Jaheira to their BG2 stats and I have fixed Imoen and especially Coran to not waste riddiculous amounts of points on Move Silently, and I havent sat for hours rolling the stats of my character either, but just assigned the attributes I wanted per editor.

I would say every one of these actions could be considered a "cheat" but thats how I prefer to play the game.

Btw I do nothing of these things in BG3 because they all arent necessary there. You can just pointbuy your character and if you dont like anything about the party NPCs, go Withers.

Some games I'm just not good at, but since I paid for it (years ago and in backlog), I may modify them just to get my moneys worth. =P

There are some games that are more fun modified than the original developer intended, so why not lol. If you're not having as much fun as you thought, then make it fun, tweak it! (also, limited inventory is a pet peeve of mine)

And then there are some games you HAVE to modify just to get past some bugs, which sometimes never get fixed, except for the wonderful modding community if we're lucky.

Some games are modified when I replay them. Why not try something new after the original play right? :)
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Occasionally yes.

GoGs Skyrim:SE version was totally broken (before they killed it with the memory leak), so i had to use the terminal several times to complete quests. Quests not finishing, missing end boss/corpse with quest item etc.
never had this type of problems with the LE.

Morrowind, to access some areas i had to use the TCL.

Of course in Elder Scrolls i also tried the God Mode and other commands.

Saints Row 2: i always use the following phone numbers/codes to unlock extra vehicles otherwise unobtainable.
#4976 - Gyrocopter
#728237 - UFO
#7266837 - mini motorbike

Now i wouldn't call this cheating since game mechanics technically allow this, but in Stronghold: Crusader i tend to strategically place Hovels and Mercenary camp so it blocks enemy barracks or to make a hole in the enemy castles walls.

But mostly, i play the games without using cheats.

Also there is no such thing as "save scumming", if a game lacks a decent save feature the only "scum" here are the developers who don't value people's time. Not to mention crashes, a game with a lack of saves better be bug free and crash proof.

If i can't save a game when i want i'm simply going to avoid such a game in the first place.

I believe that, at the very least, every game should have a "save & quit" function. Even if the devs are adamant about not letting the player save often to limit repeating things on death (which sometimes, albeit only in very specific cases, makes sense), at least respecting the fact you can't always just keep playing until the next checkpoint should be a given.

So I guess I have to define "save scumming", since there are multiple responses to my previous that are definitely not "save scumming". (It's still up to you to determine personally if you consider it cheating or not. To me, in most games that tempt me to it, it's not because it's fixing certain systems in the game that are borked.)

It's saving and loading often, to change the outcome of play because of the regular save/load.

Like saving every room in an FPS just to reload if it went poorly to do it again.

Or saving before an uncertain outcome (like an important siege in a 4x game, a critical lockpick check in an RPG, or a random reward) and reloading if the result wasn't what you wanted.

Or using save states in an emulated game to actually be able to beat an old otherwise "impossible" game like Super Ghouls and Ghosts.

"Save scumming" is actually one of the things that led to certain games limiting when and where you could save, and/or to escalating difficulty in certain games (that is, they countered "save scumming" by making the base game harder, implicitly making it a requirement).

How should this feature be handled in multiplayer games?