Why don't we have cheat modes in videogames?

After the release of Cuphead a lot of players displayed their anger about the game's brutal difficulty that prevent them from playing through the game.

This brought me back to the days when we used to cheat in a game by using cheat codes. Of course turning the game into a cake walk is not the only reason why we used to cheat in videogames because it was also fun to speed run them while having God Mode on or when the game has a fun cheat like what Resident Evil had back then, where you could have a rocket luncher with unlimited ammunition.

However, since the beginning of the last console generation, we haven't seen videogames with cheat mode support nor a service like GameShark. Why don't we have cheat mode nowadays? And don't you miss them?

I don't miss them because Cheat Engine and trainers exist.

@mike: Are there any Cheat Engines on consoles? Trainers are cool on PC but they sometimes have a malware attached to them and there is no trust worthy providers.

This is only one of the many reasons I stopped buying consoles years ago.

@kingbonesaw: I remember that NFS undercover had these types of cheat codes.

I never used cheatcodes to get past something brutal but yeah every game could use a set of godmodes to play with. Cheatcodes nowdays comes in the form of very limited unlockables if at all.

@mike: More and more PC games are getting always online which effectivly kills cheatengine aswell, are you gonna stop buying PCs? ;)

On consoles. It's because "cheats" get into some messy grey areas regarding certification requirements especially when it comes to achievements and trophies.

A lot of old cheat codes were third party hacks, which you still get on pc with cheat engine etc. So the main reason we don't get them is because publishers want to sell all the extra stuff as dlc and are afraid of people bootlegging stuff so consoles are locked down tighter than ever.

Because every game nowadays wants you to unlock things. Concept Art, graphical filters, outfits, characters, cheats.

Giving cheats on the first playthrough means that there's less stuff to unlock for a 2nd playthrough. It's also not something people expect anymore. I actually don't even remember when the last time was that i had to input a button combo to activate a cheat. If a cheat is available, it's always a selectable menu item nowadays. So if it's that prominent, why not make people unlock it, or pay for it?

Cheats also tend to disable trophies / achievements, which makes you think twice about using them. Do i really want to walk away from this playthrough of a game with nothing to show for it? Just for an hour of fun?

My solution for difficult games: Get good, but of course I would say that since beating a Dark Souls game a few months ago has made me cocky.

But, as for games not having cheats anymore which is more to the point, selling cheat codes as DLC must have fell through at some point since I vaguely remember that being a thing, though I guess someone could argue that pay-to-win loot crates have become the modern incarnation of Game Genie, GameShark and Action Replay so people can still get their gamertrophichievementscores.

I'm guessing achievements have something to do with it. I'm guessing achievements also have something to do with the lack of custom difficulties, in which you can specify enemy populations, health, HUD elements, supply amounts, etc. But personally, I wouldn't care enough to put cheat codes in my game.

Because loot-boxes exist for that specific purpose. And they wouldn't be able to sell 'em if we could just obtain 'em, or their extended effect, all willy-nilly, now, could they? (PS, Willy-hilly, willy-billy, willy-silly, willy-molly, willy-milky, willy-mo, willy-do, willy-roe, willy-do-do-do-dag all exist in the GB language data-base, but not willy-nilly. This site really has become a real fright. Or is it a... ?)

Because developers are just to damn lazy these days to do anything extra and fun it's all about the money more than ever.

They are monetized

Progress speed is monetized

Cheats lower profit

I never really liked any cheat modes. I kind of like the idea in that older games you would unlock 'cheat' modes after completing the game at a certain difficulty, or completing particular achievements in games. Even dumb stuff like "Big Head" mode was something that I never really dabbled with, but it was still cool aiming to unlock them.

Now they like to gate progression through xp or paid for xp points/VC/loot boxes. A 'cheat' mode or having cheats in game might discourage people from buying those 'experiences' as the cheat codes might scratch that same it.

It's all dumb.

Well if there's a cheat code, how will people be able to brag about beating difficult games?!

Serious answer: like others have said, it probably has to do first with achievements, and later with DLC and loot boxes.

I wonder if big head modes are also less okay to put in your game, as actors likenesses are used more and more. It used to be a staple in pretty much every sports game , but i can see Lebron James & Cristiano Ronaldo not being stoked to see pictures of their digital faces being ridiculed. It also destroys all games that rely on a somewhat serious tone. If you write the Last of Us, do you feel compelled to let the player choose to make the heads bigger, or do you rather leave that out?

It's just not how games are made anymore. They were used by developers to playtest and get through their games to test if codes worked and now developer tools have gotten better to the point where it's not needed. There was a lot of intentional insertion of cheat codes as something fun or an Easter egg, but I don't think it was as massive or widespread as people think. Most of my favorite games from the PS1 era for instance had little to no cheat codes and that number dwindled with the PS2 era. I can't even recall if any Nintendo made games had cheat codes.

Developers focused more on unlockable cheats instead, like the Stealth camo from MGS or Fat Nathan from Uncharted. It lengthens a game's lifespan and replayability.

I miss them a little too but honestly I don't think my life is incomplete without them. They served a time and place and they really don't need a comeback. I'm a little surprised, though, that all these retro throwback indie games don't have any cheat codes.

I can't recall a single always online DRM actually affecting cheat engine use, Cheat Engine is only affected when silly people try to edit values that are stored and managed server side.

Achievements kind of ruined cheat codes. Then micro transactions took them out back with a shotgun.

Edit: Michael Transaction is the killer I think.

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with online trophies and achievements.

@mike: Thats exactly me, I'd even go deeper sometimes, especially with older games. I remember parsing custom missions I made myself into Dune 2s first missions. I learned that the AI is suprisingly adaptive for being what is considered the first RTS game, its quite impressive.

@mossphite: A lot of people on Steam use unlockers for that sort of thing and nobody cares. At least not in the PC market they do. Maybe the console market is more strict about that.

@flashflood_29: Such a dumb late stage capitalism issue I bet that its actually true. Cheats/editors should always be free. Even Bethesda games wouldn't dare to go that far.

As others have mentioned by now, the fact that at some point along the way people became willing to pay for what are practically cheat code equivalents in the form of microtransactions, there's absolutely no incentive whatsoever for developers to include them when they'd rather you pick up the "best value" package to get boosts instead. It would completely make any shitty marketing tactics to lure you into purchasing loot crates or coin doublers or whatever invalid if you could just get the same out of a traditional cheat code.

I don't really think achievements or whatever are a reason at all, though. I have to imagine it would be fairly trivial to just disable achievements on someone's game if they implement cheats.