A recent study by the All Home Connections team at AT&T showed that nearly half of American gamers believe using cheat codes does not constitute cheating.
Cheat codes in video games have been around nearly as long as the games themselves, and All Home Connections set out to find which games Americans cheat at most and how American gamers feel about cheat codes in general. According to its findings, 46% of Americans said they do not consider cheat codes cheating. Additionally, Grand Theft Auto V players may be the biggest cheaters, as the game ranked first in Google searches for cheat codes in more states than any other game, a total of 14.
The study uncovered other interesting numbers as well. Of the 46% who said cheat codes don't count as cheating, 22% said they would consider hacking the game as cheating. 30% of players stated they enjoy using cheat codes after beating the game once without them as it makes it more interesting for additional playthroughs, while 34% said cheat codes make games less enjoyable. A total of 65% of responders believe it is more acceptable to cheat when playing a single-player game than when playing a multiplayer game, while 43% said only certain games, specifically single-player, should have cheat codes. There is also a difference between players who identify as male or female; while 63% of players who identify as male admitted to cheating in games, only 53% of female-identifying players admitted to cheating.
Besides Grand Theft Auto V, Fortnite and Valheim round out the top three for most Googled for cheats in states -- Fortnite topping out the search in nine states while Valheim made first in seven. Among Us came in just fourth at six states. Resident Evil Village, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption 2, Doom Eternal and Minecraft filled out the top spots in the remaining states with three or fewer states.
Opinions on cheating vary by generation as well. Millennials are far and away the most likely to cheat, with 44% admitting to cheating sometimes and 22% admitting to cheating regularly. Gen Z came in a distant second with only 50%, nearly tying with Gen X with 49%. Boomers came in a distant last, with only 37% admitting to using cheat codes. Interestingly, 54% of Gen Z, Boomers and Millennials said they would consider using cheat codes as cheating because it gives the player an unfair advantage.
To conduct this research, the All Home Connections team compiled a list of the 50 most popular games, according to PC Gamer, Tech Radar, Ranker and IGN. Then, it used SEMrush to determine which 11 cheat codes have the highest search volume on Google and compared this to data found on Google Trends to see which cheat code each state has searched for in the last 12 months. For polling gamers, it used Pollfish.
Source: AT&T