Nobody likes a cheater. Unless you are a cheater, in which case you probably see yourself as just a simple person trying to live their life in an unfair world. While that may qualify you to be a Marvel villain, that won’t exactly get you much sympathy. Cheating in single player games can–under the right circumstances–be all well and good, but if you cheat online? There shall be no mercy.
Game developers seem to feel the same way, as cheat codes have been pretty much unanimously removed from gaming entirely these days. But back in the day, you used to be able to input codes that got you unlimited lives, or more cash, or better weapons. It was especially fun to unlock new levels, thus completely skipping vast portions of the game you paid for. But even then, some developers looked down on you for using these cheats too much, implementing clever (and sometimes cruel) ways of punishing the player.
Some of these troll tactics were indeed cruel. Whether it be corrupting your copy of the game, giving you no health or totally useless weapons, and even making your character explode, game developers have thought of it all. Of course, these days developers have less patience, especially when it comes to online gaming. Now, for better or worse, developers won’t hesitate in permanently banning anyone they believe is guilty of hacking the game.
So without further ado, let’s take a look at 20 games that trolled the player for cheating, and 10 that outright ban cheaters entirely.
30 Troll: Undertale – Dirty Hacker
Undertale is a game all about messing with your expectations. Player choice influences the story subtly throughout the game, and one of the big ways is whether or not you end your enemies or spare them.
One of those ways is with the game’s files. If you edit them manually, the game will know, and give you the “dirty hacker” ending. The game will end and play the credits like normally, but one of the characters will call you a dirty hacker for cheating, and tell you to “get out of here.”
29 Troll: Star Wars: Dark Forces – Lame
God mode is a powerful cheat in video games (at least it was when cheat codes were still a thing).
Who wouldn’t want to run around as a Jedi end Stormtroopers without taking damage?
Star Wars: Dark Forces, the 1995 first person shooter, let you at least be invisible, but for a price–your humiliation. To activate the cheat code you had to first type in LA (for LucasArts) and then IAMLAME. In other words, “LucasArts I am lame.”
28 Ban: Fortnite
Fortnite is the most popular game in the world right now, despite it being full of nothing but 12 year old boys screaming insults at anybody trying to play it. Still, despite this, developer Epic Games doesn’t take kindly to cheaters.
Anyone attempt to hack into Fortnite to give themselves an unfair advantage will be banned from the game in an instant. There are countless forums online full of people complaining they got banned for no reason, but we all probably know better. Fortnite players can’t even perform their favorite dance at school anymore, as that too has been banned in some places of higher education.
27 Troll: Game Dev Tycoon – Pirated Out Of Business
Game Dev Tycoon is a simulation about what it’s like to run a video game development studio.
Believe it or not, the real life developers of the game don’t appreciate the irony of people pirating their game.
To combat these digital swashbucklers, the developers installed a mechanic that activates on pirated copies that riddles the player’s digital game studio with piracy problems. Every game made by the player will get pirated, a problem that grows so quickly over time it’ll eventually run them out of business.
26 Troll: SimCity – Quaking In Your Boots
The original SimCity was a monumental game for its time–a city building simulation game that not only let you build monolithic cities out of nothing, but also destroy them in fun ways.
It was a game that didn’t take itself too seriously, so it makes sense it will let you cheat and get unlimited money.
But there was a catch. If you used the cheat more than eight times (which you would presumably only do in more than eight playthroughs) you’ll still get your unlimited money, but your city will be destroyed by a massive earthquake.
25 Ban: Overwatch
Before Fortnite, Overwatch was the hottest thing in the world. Because of its popularity, it attracted all sorts of unsavory folks – cheaters, griefers, trolls, and cat lovers.
Among the many amusing stories of players getting banned there’s Stevooo, a Symmetra player who got banned after viewers mass reported him and a player who went out of their way to repeatedly troll a popular Twitch streamer of the game. It’s all been part of Blizzard’s notorious efforts to scale back the toxicity of its players.
24 Troll: Gradius III – The Konami Code Betrayal
The Konami code is the most famous cheat code in video game history. Who among can’t recite it from memory? Up, up, down, down, jump on your head, pat your tummy, do the Macarena, call your mother for once before she’s getting lonely, lick the controller, B, A. Classic.
In every Konami game back in the NES and SNES days, this would give you some kind of power up to help you get past those infamously difficult games. Except Gradius III, which would instead just make your ship explode without warning. Ouch.
23 Troll: Batman: Arkham Asylum – No Fly Zone
One might argue Batman: Arkham Asylum is somewhat generous with how it handles pirates. If a bit of code in the game’s script detects that the game was pirated, they’re allowed to just keep playing… with one key difference.
Pirated copies disable Batman’s cape glide ability.
The cap glide isn’t a huge feature in the original Arkham due to the small scale of the world, but there is one area where it’s mandatory to complete the game. Scarecrow fills a room with toxic gas, and you have to glide over it, something players of the pirated version of the game can’t do.
22 Ban: Halo 5
Halo might not quite be the earth-stopping, seismic event it used to be, but that doesn’t mean the franchise still doesn’t have plenty of fans. Just ask anyone playing online with Halo 5: Guardians. The penalties for any form of cheating, or even bad behavior, lead to a ban.
Developer 343 Industries released a list of bannable actions before the game’s launch, and it’s merciless. The list includes things like quitting matches when you’re losing, team ending, excessive online disconnects, and even staying idle for too long. Basically, don’t get on 343’s bad side.
21 Troll: Serious Sam 3 – Giant Scorpions
Another game that punished pirates, 2011’s Serious Sam 3 was particularly brutal on pirates. The game would start and let you begin, but almost immediately you were attacked by a giant, pink scorpion that was immortal and ended you in just one hit. Of course, as RockPaperShotgun reporter John Walker pointed out, that may have led to the unintended consequence of people pirating the game just so they could try and take down the now legendary beast.
20 Troll: The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening – Thief
In Link’s Awakening, the 1993 Game Boy game there’s a store called Town Tool Shop in Mabe Village. There, the shop owner is constantly watching you to make sure nobody steals anything.
But you can do just that by picking up whatever item you want, running circles around the owner, and leaving when he’s dizzy.
You’ll get the item for free, but you won’t exactly get off scot-free. The residents of the town will (somehow) know what you’ve done, and will forever call you a thief whenever you try to talk to them.
19 Ban: World Of Warcraft
Before there was Fortnite there was Overwatch, and before Overwatch there was a little game called World of Warcraft.
Released in 2004, the MMO is not only still supported today, but it’s still popular by regular players and cheaters alike.
As recently as October 2017, developer Blizzard launched a massive ban offensive on users of bot programs (which essentially plays the game for them). First time offenders were given six-month, but repeated offenders got bans lasting several years. Among them is somebody saying they invested 12,000 hours over five years into the game.
18 Troll: Grand Theft Auto V – Dunce
Rockstar Games has always had an… interesting reaction to cheaters. Rather than giving them any major punishments, online cheaters and hackers are often sequestered away to their own servers to cheat against each other, separate from the innocent. But in Grand Theft Auto V, they took a slightly different approach.
For “minor” offenses, players were equipped with a Dunce cap that they couldn’t take off.
For more major offenses, like smuggling powerful single-player-only weapons into the online-play, Rockstar rigged those players vehicles up to explode whenever they exited.
17 Troll: The Stanley Parable – The Boring Lecture
The Stanley Parable is a great game that deconstructs common clichés in video games, and it does so in clever ways. The game pretty much lets you cheat and mess around, breaking the game however you want and rewarding you with some of clever joke or interesting plot twist.
So maybe typing “sv_cheats 1” on the start menu isn’t really a cheat at all.
It doesn’t actually do anything, there’s not really anything to “cheat.” Typing this cheat will take you to “The Serious Room,” where the game’s narrator will give you a long-winded speech about just how serious the room is, and how cheating is bad.
16 Ban: H1Z1
The artist formerly known as H1Z1 is an online MMO zombie shooter. The running joke is that not many people play the game, but judging by the insane amount of bans handed out against hackers and cheaters would lead you to believe otherwise.
Or maybe nobody plays it because they were all banned.
The game released into early access in 2015, and that year alone, developer DayBreak Game Company banned over 25,000 players they say were hackers. The President of the company, John Smedley, even went so far as to dare people to try and cheat so he could ban them.
15 Troll: Tomb Raider 2 – Lara Croft's End
Tomb Raider 2 had a cheat that supposedly let you unlock all weapons and levels in the game.
If you start the level, take one step forward, one step backward, turn around three times, then jumped backwards, the cheat would activate.
However, that’s not what really happened. Rather than getting a bunch of cool weapons, series protagonist Lara Croft would instead explode into a bunch of tiny pieces, which would then go on to each explode themselves. Supposedly this was in response to the fake “unclothed Lara cheat” rumored to be in the first game as a way for the developers to tell players to find something better to do.
14 Troll: The Witcher 3 - The Tax Man Comeths
The Witcher 3 has widely been considered to be one of the greatest games all of time, with its clever writing cited among the long list of reason why. A secondary character in the expansion Hearts of Stone shows us exactly why.
There are several glitches in the base game that allow you to get easy money, such as ending a pasture of infinitely respawning cows and selling their hides. If at any point you possess more than 35,000 Crown, a tax man will ask you three questions relating to these exploits. If he finds you cheated to obtain your wealth, he’ll force you to pay back-taxes on it.
13 Ban: Destiny 2
Destiny 2 is another popular online shooter, and like its predecessor, it can’t seem to stay out of the bad news stream. Aside from the lootbox controversy from earlier this year, Destiny 2 has recently seen an onslaught of recent ban for cheaters.
In November 2017, Bungie launched its own campaign against hackers, banning thousands of players for allegedly hacking. But some players, like one who wrote on the Destiny 2 forums, says they didn’t hack the game, but they were banned simply for having software on their computer that could theoretically be used to hack the game.
12 Troll: Superman Returns – Not That Super
Remember Superman Returns? No, of course not. The forgotten Bryan Singer Superman movie got an equally forgotten tie-in video game, and like many games on this list, it didn’t appreciate would-be cheaters, especially achievement scammers.
Players who use any cheat code in the game whatsoever–such as ones that grant infinite health or unlock all costumes–get the “Not That Super” achievement. This “accomplishment” grants the “winner” zero points, but more crushingly permanently locks you out of getting any other achievements for the game ever again.
11 Troll: Descent II – Gabbagabbahey
In the original Descent, players had the option of entering the cheat “gabbagabbahey” to get infinite health and new weapons. It was a pretty useful cheat, believe it or not, but when it came time for the sequel, things changed a little. If you tried to use that same cheat in Descent II, instead of getting any kind of advantage, you were actually punished. Upon entering the code, you had your primary weapon taken away from you, and your health drained to almost nothing.