We get approached by many Journalists asking how many gamers actually use game hacks and more particularly what percentage of gamers use hacks. In this article we will attempt to answer this question as scientifically as possible. Disclaimer: These are well-researched estimates based on data and some amount of speculation based on experience. Noone knows the exact numbers, as it is impossible to measure.
I personally have been an active member of game hacking communities for almost 20 years, have worked in the industry for over 10 years and am able to provide many case studies and my estimation is based on that. – The short answer is: It depends on the game but on average I would estimate around 0.4% for online games on PC and Android, 3-4 times less for iOS (0.1%), anywhere between 0.01% and 0.1% for consoles. – For single player games (offline games) cheating is around 10 times easier, which would lead me to believe that around 4% cheat on PC and Android, then 1% on iOS and for consoles again 0.1% due to the extreme technical barriers-to-entry. For the data that underlies these estimates, check the case studies below.
Contributing Factors for Cheating
Evers game is different: The factors that determine how many people use game hacks are the availability of game hacks, which in turn depends on the operating system that a game uses, the ease of installation, the competitiveness of a game, the advantages that cheats offer, the risks of using cheats and the security measures that the game takes to combat cheating. – As an example many more people will use game hacks if a game has perma-death, is highly competitive, the developers do not Ban cheaters and cheats are easily available and installable for free, than if the factors were incentivizing cheating less.
Case Studies
Here we will estimate the percentage of cheaters in a few specific games based on the outlined contributing factors and the real-world data available to us.
CSGO (PC)
Counter-Strike Global Offensive is probably the best game to study how many gamers are using game hacks, as it has an extremely advanced anti-cheat system (VAC) that allows player to review gameplay footage to convict players of using hacks, which is probably the best possible system available to Ban players using game cheats in online shooters.
According to AFKgaming, which is a service that tracks VAC bans for cheating in CSGO, the percentage of people that play individual CSGO maps that were banned by VAC was ranging from 0.35% to 0.81%. – Which is what I would expect from a game that has many available cheats, but a very good system for banning cheats.
Free Fire (Android) 2024
The online mobile game Free Fire is a great example of people looking for cheats, but not as many people actually using cheats. According to Google Trends there are a lot of people (over 10%) are looking for cheats, but experience in the game and from trying to install iOS and Android Mods for online games shows me that nowhere nearly that many end up actually using cheats for the game. – This is mostly due to the barrier to entry being quite high as installing Android and iOS mods can be quite difficult, requires a rooted device sometimes, may cost money and is also risky in terms of getting banned and Malware. Overally, I would estimate that around 0.5% cheat on Android and much less (maybe 0.1%) on iOS, as the installation process is much harder.
Age of Empires 2 (1999)
One of the first games I ever played, it had integrated cheat codes that allowed you to get resources, powerful units and modify the game you were playing. – Everyone I knew at the time that played AoE2 knew about the cheat codes and had used them, taking the ‘cheater rate’ close to 100%. – It goes to show that in single player games where fairness does not matter and if given an easy solution, most if not all people would use a cheat in some situations. Of course today cheating is not as easy as back then and most cheats require you to download shady files, install software, modify files and generally jump through hoops, which makes it quite inconvenient.
Realm of the Mad God (PC) 2012
ROTMG is a 2D PC survival game with permanent death and multiplayer. I played this game back in 2012 and beyond. It is an extreme example when it comes to the popularity of game hackers, as the cheats were available for free and easy to install. Hacked clients were extremely useful and could easily save you from death back then.
Using data from google trends and mmo-population.com we can estimate that the game had around 3.800.000 players per day in April of 2012. At the same time a game hack on MPGH, which was the primary source of legitimate game hacks for ROTMG got around 200.000 views, putting the estimated user base of this particular hack at around 5% or every 20th player. – Accounting for all the other game hacking websites and cheats getting copied and reshaped, the actual number might be higher, but let’s be conservative in our estimates. Overall, ROTMG back in 2012 was the game with the most cheaters that I have ever played and I would say 5% is the higher end of my estimates when it comes to what percentage of gamers use game hacks.
League of Legends (PC) 2022
This is another extremely competitive and popular online multiplayer game and on this reddit thread people discuss how the number of script users had drastically decreased. Some commenter says that 1/50 are still scripting, one says around 1/30, another puts the population at about 1%. When I personally played the game I was not good enough to see any script users, as they would have outperformed me and played in higher leagues. Accounting for exaggeration, which is human nature, and smurfs let’s estimate the population of script users in League of Legends in 2023 at around 0.3%. – Quite a low number for how competitive the game is and how easy it is to run cheats on Windows PC, but Riot does a good job at banning cheaters, which is why the number is that low.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PC) 2014
Another game I have personally played on PC. An online shooter with a match size that is almost impossible to find due to search engines these days, but I assume to be around 26, as that is the only number I could find. I remember playing this game shortly after release and encountered a hacker around every 8th match and I also know that I almost always played on the biggest lobbies available, which would put the PC game cheater population at about 0.5%.
Fallout 76 (PC) 2019
This game shows how many gamers are opportunists when it comes to game hacking and cheating. I played Fallout 76 personally and shortly after release there were a few really big Exploits that allowed players to duplicate items, get unlimited XP and more. – One Exploit that got probably at the time hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube could only be done in one place on the map and not on every Server. You had to get inside of a particular building and disarm a particular trap, which would reward you with XP and loot, then on about 50% servers you could continue doing this infinitely, resulting in unlimited EXP.
At the time I was trying to use this exploit stealthily and was hopping from server to server, but almost always the spot was either taken or it was not working. It took me on average around 4 server hops to find a spot. Considering there were on average around 5 people on my local servers at the time and the exploit was working in around 50% of maps (in my experience), that would put the number of exploiters / cheaters at around 10% at that particular time under those circumstances. – Of course one has to consider that this exploit was temporary and cheaters where jumping into the game just to use it, that this cheat requires no installation, has the lowest barrier to entry and that people were hyper-aware of Fallut 76 Exploits at the time.
Cheating on Gaming Consoles
I cannot present case studies on cheating on gaming consoles, as these systems are extremely hard to jailbrake and run unsigned code on. – The percentage of people able to do that on current-gen consoles would be miniscule (below 0.01%). When it comes to more broad cheating techniques, such as modded controllers or bots, I would also estimate the number to be below 0.1%. However, this is all just well-informed speculation based on how high the barrier to entry would be. With consoles, usually hardware modifications have to be made or custom OS has to be installed to run any kind of cheat successfully, which only actual experts are able to do.
Conclusion
Overall, while many people would cheat if there was a one button solution and if cheating was not unfair, such as in single-player games. However, as cheats get less available, the installation process gets harder, the developers take anti-cheating measures and the incentives are skewed away from cheating, the amount of people that will actually go through with the costs and the process of acquiring and installing legitimate game hacks drops drastically to almost 0.
Again I will repeat my previous estimates as to the percentage of game hackers and cheat users in games: Around 0.4% for online games on PC and Android, 3-4 times less for iOS (0.1%), anywhere between 0.01% and 0.1% for consoles. – For single player games (offline games) cheating is around 10 times easier, which would lead me to believe that around 4% cheat on PC and Android, then 1% on iOS and for consoles again 0.1% due to the extreme technical barriers-to-entry. For the data that underlies these estimates, check the case studies below.
