Ik heb een hekel aan pedofielen en aan online cheaters, en laten deze twee nu beiden een overeenkomst hebben. Want ze willen namelijk hun acties goed praten met een slap excuus. Nu heeft de website Kotaku een heel groot en uitgebreid artikel geschreven over online cheaters die betalen voor tools, en hun motivatie er achter. Zo word het verhaal verteld van een zekere John die maar is gaan cheaten omdat zijn clan leden (die volgens hem werkeloos zijn) meer XP en skills hadden dan hij, of te wel een foute klootzak die niet kan gamen en toch wel mee wilt doen. Dus greep hij maar naar cheats en voelt zich nu helemaal de man omdat hij het kan, en inderdaad dat rijmde.

Om te lieten zien hoe ongelofelijk kneus het is heeft hij zelfs de onderstaande video online gezet, waarin we hem en zijn cheats (waar hij maandelijks voor moet betalen) aan het werk zien. Meer informatie kan je vinden in dit erg uitgebreide artikel, en ik hoop dat John zo snel mogelijk gebanned gaat worden.

John lives on a 200-acre farm somewhere in Canada. He has a day-job and loves to play video games. He bought Battlefield 3 at launch last fall and played it on the PC. Then some things happened and, soon enough, John became the kind of gamer who has an arsenal of cheats at his disposal. Each was a hack that he paid for. One lets him saunter into a multiplayer match in Battlefield 3 and automatically kill the next person he sees. If he's feeling particularly destructive, John flicks on a hack called "Mass Murder" and strolls through a Battlefield battlefield while every opposing player just drops dead. One button press and the text notices indicating the death of each opposing player scrolls in like the next line of movie credits. These hacks John uses require no skill other than the discretion not to be caught by the people who make Battlefield. His opponents stand no chance.

"Technically hacking does ruin games," John recently told me. "I do feel bad for doing it, 'cause I know regular legit gamers-which I once was-just want to have fun and play the game with their friends. I basically go into servers and hack, because it's like releasing anger with my job. I fix Blackberrys for Rogers Wireless, and I get bitched at and get stressed out, because people are upset."

Cheating is John's anger outlet, one he's willing to pay up to $25 a month to keep using. His situation is the reverse of most video game scare stories. Video games have not compelled him to misbehave in the real world. A shooter video game didn't turn him into a hellion in real life. On the contrary, the real world, he says, is what has caused him to be a cheating terror in the video games he plays.

Paying cheaters like John are the steroid-users of video games, with two caveats: 1) nothing they do appears to be illegal; 2) nothing they do appears to require the skill that, say, still must be present to enable even the most chemically-enhanced baseball player to swat a 95-mph fastball over an outfield wall.

Paying cheaters certainly violate what some would say is the spirit of the game. They certainly spoil what other players might have thought was a fair competition contested among players of Battlefield or Call of Duty or any other competitive PC game.

A hacker uses cheats in Battlefield 3 in this clip that was uploaded to YouTube a few weeks before BF3 was officially released.