As the competitive online gaming and eSports industries gain legitimacy by becoming more popular and attracting mainstream attention, the question of competitive integrity lingers in the back of my mind. Can the game’s developers, community, and users maintain and uphold competitive integrity? Or will they fold under the pressure of greed and complacency?
Some of you may recall the “Konami Code” or the “Contra Code”: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, and optionally Start/Select at the end. Cheats like the Konami Code or Contra Code were safe for the game’s integrity and were programmed into the game by the developers as a way for players to experience the game in a unique way.
Today’s cheating culture, however, is very different from the Konami Code era of cheats–particularly cheats, hacks, and exploits of competitive online games. Cheats and…
