Cheats, clever use of game mechanics, tweaking your own gamefiles, varied Trainers and plenty of other similiar things has been part of the games as long as gaming itself has existed, but now it seems their time has come to an end.
Why you might ask? Microtransactions.
We have enjoyed their presence on multiplayer games for quite the while now, but now their ugly head is rearing to the single player games aswell. I personally wonder, how will they affect the landscape of which this topic is on about for us, gamers.
The first big backlash on this front was of course the Mass Effect 3 DLC, that was on disk and with a simple .ini tweak was usable to anyone.
This didn't go well with EA's plans and they quickly in yet another lapse of the PR judgement likened anyone who did that to a level of a pirate.
Only for doing something that probably every "educated" PC gamer has been doing for years and years.
Latest case was revealed just yesterday when people found an in-game way to duplicate items in singleplayer game Dead Space 3, speeding up their progress immensely with this cheat.
The downside is that it was not supposed to work that way because EA had planned buy 2 win scheme for those who wanted faster progression in their game.
More info on that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21367852
Thus far EA has not commented on the subject, whetever it will patch this glitch and then seek to somehow punish those who abused it so the future of this case remains open.
It still raises quite the interesting question in my opinion. Where do we as a gamers draw a line, or atleast think where it should be?
Traditionally, if I wanted to cheat it game it was in fact readily available feature but nowdays you might even risk breaking the law if you attempt anything, depending on from what perspective law is being read.
My perspective to whole thing is very consumer based in this case of course as a consumer and I would like to keep my "right" use the product I paid for in any way I see fit as long as no copyright laws are broken.
To me this seems like yet another step towards the direction where we cease to have any rights to a product regardless if we buy them (When they use words such as sell/buy, I will keep using words own/mine and assume the product is mine in every sense of the word) and that sucks some major donkey balls.