Almost every young gamer has at some point used the popular hacking software Cheat Engine, which was injected into the video game process and changed the values of certain parameters. These changes affected specific processes in the game and allowed players to ‘cheat.’ As technology developed, sophisticated anti-cheat systems began to appear (Vanguard in Valorant, BattleEye in many games, FaceIt anti-cheat in the FaceIt league, and so on), which have a multi-level protection system and attempt to detect cheaters. If a cheat developer bypasses this protection and studies the game from the inside (finds out what parameters are present and what they affect), a new cheat will appear. Many beginners learn how to program cheats on the Russian-language gaming forum YOUGAME.
Many players purchase prohibited programmes to quickly level up their accounts, loot expensive items in the game, gain a basic advantage, or simply for fun. Some video games have a Real Money Trading (RMT) mode that allows players to sell in-game items for real money. The more expensive the item you get, the more expensive you can sell it for. There are many dishonest gamers in such games, but the anti-cheat module works at a high level, periodically banning waves of accounts — hundreds of thousands of cheaters' accounts can be banned at once.
