Exploiting is cheating. The only people who would argue against that are the people who do it. I always laugh at the "paying customer" argument because it completely ignores a major part of the idea of a "paying customer", that every other person in that game with you (barring the PC Pirates) is ALSO a paying customer. And you exploiting (cheating, deal with it it's cheating) is ruining the other paying customers collective experience with the game and jeopardizing the companies future profits. I'm a perfect example. I bought MW2, experienced the OODLES of cheaters and hackers, sold that (I never sell games), and said "fuck off" to the idea of buying another CoD game. Cheating/Exploiting caused Activision/Treyarch to lose the chance of getting my money. I know for fact that I'm not the only one whose CoD experience was soured beyond repair by the cheaters, so that's even more money Activision and Treyarch ARE NOT getting due to exploiting and cheating. But I suppose people who take so much time to get those 501-8 scores and care so much about that number aren't smart enough to think past themselves and see that companies dont give a shit about one persons money...they give a shit about losing A LOT of people's money.

Exploiting is lame and I wish people wouldn't do it, but in a competitive game, what do you expect? You are given a set of rules and told to do the best you can. I feel the only way to handle it is allow anything that isn't tampering with the game, or at the very most disallow well defined and very specific glitches. It works because there are simple and hard standards. Without them, who's to say what strategies are allowed? Does understanding spawn priorities and using that understanding to my advantage make me illegitimate? If a gun and perk combo is particularly effective in a way not intended does it then become unfair? I say the onus is on the developer to make the rules of the world as unabusable as they can, and the player should expected to bang there head on those rules in attempt to find the most effective way to win.

For the record, I do my part by not abusing obvious glitches that completely unbalance a game, (I remember how much I hated playing against one of my friends who would always BXR and super bounce in Halo 2), but I would not call players who do cheaters. Only jerks.

I also think that exploiting =/= cheating.  Cheating implies that one is circumventing the rules that are in place in the game.  Exploiting a game means that within the rules set forth for everyone playing the game, an individual has found a system that gives them an advantage.  Hacking means that you are tampering with the game's rules.  Glitching, while part of the game that the developers released, was not intended by the developers to happen, but sloppy coding let it slip in.

I'd argue but this guys new.

Exploiting is bad when there is some sort of competition involved or if even one person participating is expecting fair play. I didn't mind going into a custom game in Halo 2 and swapping my sword with a rocket launcher until I flew over my friends head so that we could explore all of HeadLong, but I would never wedge myself into a part of the map no one knows about so that I can win a game of Oddball in Halo 3.

They're not the same-thing but I look down upon them both. Cheating is worse but exploiting is not that much better. It's all about respecting the game. Unfortunately, respect is hard to come by on the internet these days.

Exploiting is just being resourceful.

I don't really play multiplayer games, but when I do, I say "Everything goes". All is fair, love and war. The only thing that isn't okay is hacks-- like wall hacks, aimbots, etc. I remember playing Gears of War 1 and people whining at me because I'd rape every match with the chainsaw gun, and everybody would go all apeshit. Eventually they nerfed the chainsaw and then that was that. Yeah, I lack skill in most multiplayer shooters and MMO's, so I find alternative ways to win and exploit those findings. In Star Wars Galaxies, the Bounty Hunter class used to be a big underdog, so it was near impossible to win in a one-on-one fight against a bounty you were after- like a spy, commando, or dark jedi. So you'd have to use your wits and exploit game systems like lag, respawn, going LD (you log off and your character stays in game for 5 minutes), or wait for people to jump into a battle with someone else so you can pop in and kill steal. The developers didn't intend this, but being a Bounty Hunter was pretty difficult without full gear so you had to improvise, adapt, and overcome through exploits of the game's flaws. Do I feel like a bad person? No, I did what I needed to do to earn credits and buy cool virtual shit.

Let's see if I can transfer this argument to the real world, because, video games and real life are so incredibly different: Do you think petroleum was intended to be used as a fuel source? Dubai is the most advanced city in the world because they exploited the world's demand for this product, and all the commerce and technological advancement globally because of our exploitation of it as a fuel source. Or the hydrogen atom to be used as a powerful destructive weapon? If America hadn't exploited the atom's destructive properties, a lot more American soldiers would have died in the pacific. Were these uses intended? Probably not, but their properties were exploited, and because of it, the Western world has become a dangerous, powerful force to be reckoned with. Exploiting flukes and mistakes in our and the world's evolution has what has ensured humanity's survival so far, and had we played by the rules, we would not even be able to have this discussion on this platform in the first place. Exploiting isn't cheating. It's being resourceful, creative, and thinking outside of the box. The only people that disagree are the people that lose as a result.

If it's in the game, it should be used. But as they say, if you're in their house, you follow their rules, so there really is no sense in fighting something like that. Also, what the dude Andorski above me said. He put it perfectly.

Got a little long winded at the end but I can see your point. I only use every way possible to win in single player games.

" @Rohok: But exploiting implies using something that wasn't meant to be in the game. In my opinion, neither exploiting nor cheating is fair in any way shape or form. "

" @Rockdalf: A bit odd since I'm an atheist but alrighty. I'm not a fan of my voice myself and am self-consious about it. Excuse me while I buy two pints of ice cream and cry. "