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SALT LAKE CITY — Honesty is the best policy, except when it comes to playing video games in Utah.
A new study shows Utah is 8th in the nation for the number of people who would cheat while playing mobile and video games.
Online poker platform Replay Poker conducted a search-volume analysis, analyzing around 200 search terms related to cheating such as "hacks," "cheats," "mods," "codes" and more, to determine the states most often seeking game aids. The average monthly search volume was then scaled against the population.
Ash Keene, operations manager at Replay Poker, said it's insightful to see which states are most likely to cheat and interesting to see which games players have "the least qualms about playing dishonestly."
Utah amassed an average of 256.1 monthly cheat-related searches per 100,000 people.
Washington came in first, with 280.84; and Oregon trailed close behind, with 280.1 searches. At the opposite end, Mississippi was found to have the most honest gamers, with fewer than 183 monthly cheat searches per 100,000 people.
Replay Poker's data found Utahns searched most frequently for "Sims 4 mods" and "Wordle cheats." Nationally, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy, Little Alchemy and Fallout 4, along with Sims 4 and Wordle, were the most common games for which players tried to find cheats.
"If using a mod, hack or cheat code places you at an unfair advantage over your competitor, reconsider your actions," Keene said. "After all, it's much more satisfying to complete a game organically than it is using cheats."
The most common cheat sought was how to enhance playing abilities using in-game modifications. Searches for modifications almost outnumbered the combined number of searches for cheats, hacks and codes.
"In an age where gaming has become far more lucrative through the likes of gaming tournaments and streaming, many community-based games have cracked down on cheating in recent years," Keene said. "Where, once, developers widely built cheat codes into their titles, it's now becoming less acceptable to modify or hack software to gain an advantage — even if it's in the name of healthy competition."
The game Starfield was just released in September, but has quickly gained widespread popularity in the gaming world.
You are not a winner if you cheat to get on the podium.
–Trevor Gee
"However, given the new Starfield release is in the mix as a game that players are keen to cheat while playing, it's clear that some developers are still giving mods a greenlight. It's a fine line between using features like this to enhance the gaming experience and then ruining the experience for others," Keene said.
Natalie Mollinet, of Lehi, plays all the New York Times mobile games, such as Wordle, Connections and the mini crossword. She and her family have a group text where they drop their scores each day. It's become a daily family tradition.
"It doesn't matter if we win or lose because not all of us win every day. It keeps us all connected during the day and we laugh if we epically fail at Wordle if it's a tricky word," she said.
Mollinet said they're just "fun, little games," but you definitely shouldn't tell anyone you won if you cheated. She thinks it's OK to look at hints, because even with the hints, it can still be a challenge to find the answers.
"The New York Times games, I think, are meant to help educate and make you think, so if you're cheating you might be doing yourself a disfavor," she said. "But even though it's a silly game, don't cheat and instead learn something from these games!"
St. George resident Trevor Gee said he uses exploits, or taking advantage of existing glitches in the system, when playing single-player games.
"Most of the ones I use, I've either stumbled upon by my normal, bizarre way of playing games, which is usually extremely likely to break most games, or by casually browsing different game wikis," he said.
For example, he has found bugs in games like Skyrim that can be used to his advantage.
"The way I see it, if exploits and glitches are left in a game, they are part of the game, and I often can use those exploits to have a lot more fun and get into all kinds of shenanigans," he said.
That idea, however, does not apply to multiplayer games. When Gee was younger, he would use exploits but he has since grown out of that.
"The competition is the game; if you win by cheating, you shouldn't be playing that kind of game to begin with. It saps the entire purpose from the game, and I think those players should be banned permanently from any and all competitive games they use those exploits in. You are not a winner if you cheat to get on the podium," Gee said.
Although the data was not broken down by age, Gee suspects many of the Utah players who are looking up cheats are little kids trying to be good at the game, just like he used to do. People and kids who use cheats to be good at a game they aren't excelling at can ruin the experience for everyone else, he added.
