Video Games That Punish Cheaters

Nobody likes a cheater, least of all videogame developers! So, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that plenty of games have built-in methods to discourage cheating. However, some developers go out of their way to punish cheaters in the wildest ways imaginable! From outrageous anti-piracy measures to seriously harsh consequences for using the game’s own systems, here are some videogames that punish cheaters!

Konami Code

Cheat codes. Remember those? Though not as common nowadays, you used to be hard pressed to find a game that didn’t let you bash a few buttons and unlock some kooky cheat for your favorite videogame. And the Konami code is probably the most iconic gaming cheat code in existence. Originally used solely in Konami games, the button combo became so famous that other developers started putting it in their games too. And some of them saw it as a golden opportunity for a little trolling.

2002’s Super Monkey Ball Jr. for the Game Boy Advance has a silly little surprise for attempted cheaters. When entering the Konami code on the title screen, nothing happens aside from the text being altered to read “Super nice try.”

Cheeky, but not the end of the world. Unlike entering the code in sci-fi shooter Gradius III! Doing so in the 1989 SNES release would grant all powerups, but then completely destroy your ship!

But perhaps the best example of Konami code trolling appears in 2003’s Silent Hill 3. Players that use the code after beating the game once receive an interesting reward. Supporting character Douglas Cartland will appear in his underwear for the entirety of your playthrough. That’s literally it. No infinite ammo, no crazy unlocks, no invincibility. Just a middle-aged man in his boxers.

Banjo Kazooie

The 1998 N64 classic Banjo-Kazooie is known for its tight platforming, iconic soundtrack, and dry British humor. But some things in the game aren’t funny in the slightest. Basically, there’s a dedicated cheat room that allows you to enter codes for some sweet bonuses. Level skips, infinite supplies, you name it, you can probably get it.

But there’s a catch! If the player enters 2 codes in a row that are deemed “illegal,” that’ll be the likes of those level skips, the villain of the piece makes an appearance! Gruntilda, the evil witch, will let you know outright that you’re on thin ice, claiming that entering another illegal code will cause her to completely erase your save game.

That can’t be true, right? Well, bashing in another code reveals that it is. Old Grunty will pop up and tell you that you’re out of luck. And the next time you exit to the main menu, you’ll see that your entire save is gone. Countless hours up in flames. All because you wanted to take the easy route.

Spyro 3: Year Of The Dragon

2000’s Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon on PlayStation One is one of the best games ever made. And it’s also got one of the most savage anti-piracy measures imaginable. PS1 discs were notoriously difficult to copy because of a series of unique “wiggles” imprinted on each disc that determined region and legality. Basically, the disc drive would read the wiggles and if any were missing or wrong, it’d know you’re using an illegal copy.

In response to this, hackers started installing special modchips in consoles, capable of bypassing this measure and fooling the PlayStation into thinking any disc was legit. Only, some games had ways to detect these chips. Like Spyro 3. And developer Insomniac had left some nasty surprises in the game for hackers.

The hacked game will run normally at first. Players can explore levels, collect gems, all that good stuff! However, when they run into Zoe the fairy near the end of the first world, she says something unsettling.

From then on, the game seems to play fine. Until it doesn’t! Collected gems and eggs randomly disappear from the player’s inventory, forcing them to replay old levels to maintain their totals. Even worse, the game will randomly crash, Spyro’s health will drop and can’t be restored again, and the language will randomly change in PAL copies.

But, if a particularly persistent hacker wanted to put in the hard work to finish the game, they’d be in for a shock. After defeating the final boss, the player is then immediately teleported to the beginning of the game, and their save file is completely wiped.

Undertale

2015’s Undertale is a quirky, funny RPG with multiple different ways to play. Players can attempt to talk to foes and resolve things peacefully, or just destroy everything in their path. But did you know that there’s another option?

In the original PC release, the player can always just cheat. By hopping into the game files and manipulating them, it’s technically possible to skip over huge portions of the game and reach the end early. Undertale’s endings are determined based on milestones the player reaches and how they choose to proceed, for example, whether they chose to spare or eliminate a certain boss.

But what if, after manipulating the game files, you give contrasting info? What if you told it that you were on a pacifist run, but you’d still killed some characters? Or what if you skipped to the end without participating in enough choices to get any ending? In those cases, the game can’t determine which ending you receive. So, what happens? Well, like normal, the friendly skeletal NPC “Sans” speaks with the player. But this time something’s different.

After that, the player is booted back to the main menu. Frankly though, if you’ve edited the game files to skip the actual gameplay of the game you’ve bought, the very least you deserve is to get called out!

Animal Crossing: Mr. Resetti

Animal Crossing is probably the last game that comes to mind when you think of cheating. What the heck would you cheat for? It’s a relaxing life sim about making money and friends. Well, developer Nintendo was actually pretty concerned about it.

In-game shops and prices change each day. So in the original game it would be totally possible for players to boot up the game, check what was on offer, and simply change the date on their device and reset if they didn’t like what they saw. Over and over again. Pretty cheesy, right? So, Nintendo came up with a solution. Resetting the game without saving caused Mr. Resetti to appear.

He’ll give players a polite message about how important it is to save before resetting. Polite but long-winded and un-skippable. Annoying. Reset again? Resetti re-appears, less polite than before. Every time you reset, he gets angrier and more long-winded. He may even ask the player to write out an apology!

Nintendo’s idea was to make the process of resetting as laborious as possible to discourage cheaters. It’s kind of genius really! Nowadays though Mr. Resetti has been retired from the series with the advent of auto save making the manipulation of dates impossible. Plus, he also terrified a lot of kids.

Crysis Warhead

When it comes to shooters, one thing has to be satisfying or there’s just no point in playing: the shooting. So, developer Crytek had a delightfully devilish idea when looking to protect 2008’s Crysis Warhead from pirates! Criminals who tried to grab a free copy of the explosive shooter received a particularly unique punishment. Pirated copies replace all of your bullets with chickens.

The chickens are basically useless. Don’t expect to be getting very far with your poultry guns! The very best part? The crazy quirk caused a whole shedload of people to post online asking how to fix this “strange glitch.” Amazing, I love it when hackers out themselves! Funnily enough, a lot of legitimate players saw the posts and wanted to try it out themselves.

GTA V Dunce Cap

The online mode of 2013’s groundbreakingly popular Grand Theft Auto V is absolute chaos. Some people want to cause utter mayhem, blowing things up and crashing cars. Others would rather role play as a regular joe going to work and try to avoid the carnage around them, for some reason. Point is, it’s full of a huge variety of playstyles, including, unfortunately, cheaters and bad sports.

Developer Rockstar know this and didn’t want the game to devolve into something completely unfun for its players, so they came up with a solution. Cheaters and nasty players, that is, those who’ve either hacked the game or get their kicks from grifting other players, are given a neat little hat. A dunce cap! Just so everybody knows that they’re no good. On top of that, they’re booted to a dedicated lobby filled only with other dunces!

And if you thought the normal lobbies got bad, the dunce lobbies are the wild west of the GTA world. These villains are stuck in loser limbo for a few days before being allowed to return to regular lobbies. Though if they’re repeat offenders, they stay there even longer! That’s the stuff, let the dregs ruin each other’s days instead of ours!

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Whether you believe Batman is the greatest superhero in the world or not, you can’t deny that he’s pretty darn cool. And his laundry list of funky gadgets makes playing as him in 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum a total blast. Unless you pirate the game of course.

Those players that try to grab an illegal copy will find themselves totally unable to glide using the bat’s big old cape! Given that gliding is absolutely essential to traversing large gaps, and by extension progressing in the game, criminals are square out of luck. The grappling hook becomes equally unhelpful. Instead of attaching to regular grapple points and allowing Batsy to reach high places, it’ll randomly attach to out of bounds grapple points, sending the player directly to their doom.

So the game becomes Batman, without any Batman stuff. You may as well be playing as Alfred. Over on the forums of publisher Eidos, players outed themselves as pirates by asking how to fix the strange “glitch” they’d encountered. In one infamous example, a forum admin responded by revealing the truth about the anti-piracy measures.

Afterlife and The Death Star

Star Wars and Indiana Jones creator George Lucas’s name may be synonymous with film, but there was once a time that it held clout in the gaming industry too!

Lucasarts was originally a licensor and developer that created some truly unique games back in the day, including one called Afterlife. The 1996 release is a city building game like SimCity, only, instead of an ordinary city, it revolves around building a functioning heaven and hell. As well as roads and infrastructure, players can also erect magical buildings like “reincarnation centers.”

Like other city builders, the player needs a whole load of cash to build a prosperous afterlife. But if a player doesn’t want to play by the rules, well, there are in-game codes that can be used to get extra moolah. Lucasarts didn’t want you abusing them though! Use them one too many times and a familiar phrase pops up on screen.

The death star makes an unwelcome appearance and starts blasting apart the world that you spent so long building! Unfortunately, if your cheating butt gets struck down here, you won’t become more powerful than anybody could possibly imagine, you’ll just lose a whole load of progress!

Call Of Duty: Warzone

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know Call of Duty: Warzone is an online battle royale spinoff created in 2020 to ride the hype of games like Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. Naturally these games are hugely competitive, causing players desperate for that sweet victory royale to either put in the grind or cheat. .

Call of Duty has always been notorious as a hacker’s paradise, but this time developers Raven and Infinity Ward decided to take action. They implemented an anti-cheat software called Ricochet and used it to create some nasty surprises for hackers.

Mavriq

@MavriqGG

· Follow

Looks like other than adjusting bullet damage (damage shielding) from cheaters, legit players will go "invisible" when shot by flagged cheaters. Dunno how it exactly works (what triggers, effects on other players, etc). We'll probably see more clips in the coming days.

Mavriq

@MavriqGG

Looks like Ricochet might have some new tricks 👀

12:00 PM · Feb 19, 2022

661

Read 30 replies

When the cheater started to fire on a legit player, the legit player turned completely invisible and was able to take him down! Every player attacked by a cheater basically becomes a supernatural ninja that hackers can’t defeat.

However, it’s worth noting that anti-cheat software like Ricochet is notoriously shoddy and unreliable. So, since this countermeasure was implemented, hackers have found ways to get around it, and in some cases even make themselves invisible.

Anthony Wheeler

@NAMELESS

· Follow

THIS GUY IS INVISIBLE ON THE MAP... WHAAAAAAAAAAT

1:11 PM · Dec 16, 2020

178

Read 13 replies

Arma 2: FADE

2009’s tactical shooter Arma 2 is well known for both its realistic combat and insane anti-piracy measures. The game features a program called FADE, which is designed to cause a cracked copy of Arma to slowly descend into what can only be described as madness. To begin, everything will seem normal until the player’s accuracy is suddenly and dramatically reduced.

Right away that makes the game basically impossible to play! And that’s just the beginning. Following this, the title cards will start flashing up mid-play, before the player’s view goes all wibbly.

But things will only get worse! Finally, the pirate will be transmogrified into a bird and sent flapping on their way!

This’ll be accompanied by a message reading: “Good birds don’t fly away from this game, I have only myself to blame.” If being turned into a fricking bird won’t teach pirates a lesson about stealing videogames, nothing will!

Superman Returns: Not That Super

Anybody remember the 2006 movie Superman Returns? It was a largely forgettable flick that didn’t do too well at the box office. So, the chances you played its tie-in videogame of the same name are next to none. It was a pretty poor movie tie-in aside from one thing, how it handled cheating players!

Like other, better games, Superman Returns had a built-in cheat menu where players could enter codes for bonuses, but I wouldn’t recommend using them! The moment that a player pops one of those codes into the menu, they receive a 0 Gamerscore achievement called “Not That Super,” complete with a condescending image of Superman wagging his finger at you. The description reads “Entered a cheat code in a desperate plea for help.”

That’d make anybody feel pathetic! But that’s not all! After cheating and being “awarded” this achievement, you’ll be completely unable to unlock any other, more desirable ones! Given how much gamers love achievements, that’s a big deal. There’s nothing quite like heading into a game expecting to feel like a superpowered muscleman and leaving feeling like a total loser. Then again, if you bought this travesty of a game, maybe you deserve it.

Doom

When Doom was released in 1993, it changed the gaming landscape forever. After its resounding success, the developer, id Software knew there was lots of money to be made from similar shooters, so a year later they published dark fantasy shooter Heretic on the same engine. Heretic proved a big hit, especially among fans of Doom. Only, it had a tricksy little secret.

Doom had several cheat codes that could be entered to activate significant boosts like invincibility or equipping every weapon. Because Heretic ran on the same engine, longtime Doom players assumed those same codes might yield similar results. Like this one in the clip below, which should grant invulnerability.

In Heretic, it straight up kills you! So, what about unlocking all weapons? That’s harsh! The player loses all their weapons and gets a shoddy stick instead! If you try and cheat on Heretic, all you get is doom.

Sims 4

For anybody that’s never had the pleasure of playing The Sims, it’s a life simulation game that tasks you with maintaining the lives of several simulated people, or “sims”. Well, maintaining or destroying, there’s nothing stopping you from burning their houses down!

Anyway, when Sims 4 was released in 2014, it came with some anti-piracy protection that was supremely fitting. Essentially, in the day to day, you need to tell your sims to do basic tasks like sleeping, eating, and showering. So, to make sure players don’t have to see their polygon pals in the nude, they’ll become pixelated to protect their modesty. After leaving the shower and getting dressed, the pixelation will vanish. At least it should, if you’re using a legal copy of the game.

Pirated copies won’t remove the pixelation. Ever. What’s more? Like some kind of anti-fun virus, the pixelation will spread until it covers the entirety of the game screen.

At that point, a pirate is basically forced to buy the game legally if they want to get any kind of enjoyment from it whatsoever. Unless they happen to really enjoy vague shapes, in which case they’d have been better off pirating an old Atari game.

Killing Cows In The Witcher 3: Chort

The Witcher 3 is a sprawling open world RPG full of interesting choices, and opportunities to profit from them! At the start of the game however, the player is confined to a relatively small opening area and only given the opportunity to gain minor amounts of gold as they explore. So, some players were a little impatient. They wanted to get rich straight away, and came up with a cheeky way of doing so.

There are some poor, defenseless cows in the area that just so happen to drop cowhide if you slay them. Cowhide can only be sold for a small amount of cash, so it’d hardly make a guy rich! Unless of course, you had infinite cowhide, right? Well, conniving players realized they could get the cows to endlessly respawn by meditating.

Meditating effectively jumps the game forward in time and reloads all of the assets, including the cows. So, players could repeatedly slaughter them, farm and sell their hides, and meditate until they had an absolute boatload of gold. All before even leaving the starting town!

Naturally, developer CD Projekt Red wasn’t too happy about this, and they wanted to punish players that exploited it. The solution? The bovine defense force! It might sound like a particularly crappy anime, but it was actually a genius bit of coding. See, after an update, if a player used the meditation method to kill more than five cows, they’d be in for a nasty surprise!

That’s a Chort in the clip above, a super tough monster that’s way over levelled for this section of the game. Any exploiters would be suddenly faced with this bad boy, ensuring their attempt to make a quick buck would backfire badly! It might be called a “chort” but the only ones chortling were the devs!

Tomb Raider

When Tomb Raider first launched back in 1996, nobody could’ve predicted how massive it’d end up becoming. The game sold gangbusters and wound up starting one of the most recognizable franchises ever. Lara Croft became an icon! So, when the sequel, Tomb Raider 2, came around in ’97, the hype was crazy! Players quickly discovered an oddity, however. When entering a certain combination of buttons, Lara just kind of explodes?

Well, that’s interesting. But why did that happen? Well, on the PC version of the first game, entering this button combo gave the player all the weapons! So it’s a troll against old fans who expected the same cheat, right? That’s entirely possible but there’s another, more explicit theory.

Gamers liked Lara, they really liked her. So much so that a rumor started to spread that a secret code in the first game would make her change into her birthday suit. This so called “nude raider” code rumor just wouldn’t die. So, the story goes that a developer on Tomb Raider 2 created the exploding cheat and leaked it to outlets himself, claiming that it was the nude raider code! That way, perverted gamers would try to get a peek at Lara’s Crofts, and wind up getting a pretty harsh game over instead!

We really want that to be the truth. But to this day, nobody knows for sure. Whatever the case, it’s definitely one of the coolest video game trolls of all time!

If you were amazed at these video games that punish cheaters, you might want to read about video games that roast you for being bad. Thanks for reading!