[Chara]

Yea, cheating online is pretty stupid in my opinion. I never played socom but I have played counterstrike since 1.0. Probably played some of the beta versions also, dont really remember. Anyway the game was pretty good and all and the main thing that kept me palying was that there was always someone out there better than me and I had to beat them. Out of a server of 32 people, I would be better than 2/3rds of them but the final third just handed my ass to me on a golden platter. I kept playing so I can manage to get on thier level and do the same to them. As you said, the competition was great.

But then around version 1.2ish cheating came around. I joined a server and over half the people were better than me. I was losing to kids that were like 10 (I could tell because of the way they sounded on the mic and how they always were like "hAAHGA omfg pwnagfe!!111!" whenever they got a frag) and there was a small chance that I won. It was pretty obvious that you were cheating and people get mad at you for it. There was no glory in cheating, no one acknowledged your high score, and sometimes you even get kicked. But people kept on cheating. It really sucked. Eventually if you was halfway decent people would kick you out of a game for cheating. I remember I got 3 headshots in a row and everyone was like "OMFG, cheater. Kick him.". Eventually the game wasnt much fun anymore and I just quit playing.

Cheaters mess up the game for everyone. I dont know why people do it, as I said there is no glory in it. I guess there will always be cheaters in life.

But game developers are having anti-cheat software built into thier games nowadays. Some even code so good its next to impossible to cheat. Once harddrives become more popular on consoles I can see anti-cheat software beign installed on future games.