But what about cheat codes that make it impossible to lose the game in the first place? But what about reloading until conditions such as item drops or some other randomly generated thing goes your way? What about stuff like a game where an extra life respawns every time you reload and getting infinite lives? Certainly takes longer than a cheat code, but it has the same result.
Like I said, I think most of those fall into a grey area depending on context and intent.
The lives thing is a difficult one. If the developers tried to get that taken out of the game but couldn't, or it was left there by accident, I'd say it's cheating. If they deliberately allowed you to get infinite lives, it isn't. The latter is incredibly unlikely, but there's no way of knowing for sure, you know?
kevwaffles was right on the money, I was thinking Golden Sun 1 item drop stuff. Basically, when you start the game the RNG starts at a certain point, and if you follow a certain set of actions you will always get the same result (in this case, getting the item you want).
Well, did finding out you could do that involve getting right into the code of the game? Not everyone would do that, obv, but did someone have to go "outside" the boundaries of the game to find out you could do that (before telling everyone else about it)? Because yeah, that's cheating.
If you do it by accident, no. It's about intent.
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"whats a matter afried i might boobs punch you" - ertyu