I've been thinking about this concept for a while, and thought it might be an interesting talking point.
To make it clear, this isn't a thread promoting usage, nor is it meant to throw the current records into chaos. It is simply for discussion
The argument is simple: Are in game cheats really cheating?
My thought process into this is that they are a deliberately added feature into quite a number of games. Whether they were developer tools left in accidentally, or kept in for players to mess around with, they are an actual programmed part of the game.
Given the websites theme, plenty of games are run in ways not intended by the developers, where they be wall clips, or sequence breaking or any number of other unintended consequences of coding bugs. Are these really any better or worse than actual features?
Interested to know your thoughts
Different leaderboards take different stances on this matter, depending on how much the cheat affects the game. A cheat that unlocks total invincibility or some similarly game breaking advantage almost certainly won't be allowed for the main full game category, but a cheat that just gives you extra lives or some other moderate advantage might.
For an example of the latter, the cheat in Streets of Rage 2 that unlocks the very easy & mania difficulties also gives you the option of starting with up to 9 lives (compared to a max of 5 without the cheat). This is allowed for all categories for that game. Some runners do that, others prefer to start with just 1.
There are times when a game has a built-in or programmed cheat for those who want to play other modes for variation (to not make the game repetitive or boring) to encourage more game time, such as Minecraft where you can use the cheat "creative" or "survival" mode. But it is up to the player if he wants to use the cheats. On the other hand, if there are available cheat codes players can find online, it will be up to them if they consider it cheating or not. A player who wants to think he didn't cheat even when he used cheat codes will find every excuse for what he did.
If it's a matter of morality or just appreciation for the developers, when developers say they don't like players using the cheat codes, then using cheat codes for their game is disrespectful. There's also the matter of players boasting of finishing a game early or with high performance but they actually used cheats.
For me, the best way to play any game is without the cheat codes because that's the only time you'll really feel proud of yourself for finishing the game as is. After, you can use cheat codes to discover any easter eggs or just to make the gameplay more interesting.
I would say that in-game cheats count as "cheating" only when they were not intended by the developers. An in-game cheat that is clearly allowed to be used by players, can't be cheating - it's up to the players to choose if they want to use it or not. In the context of speedrunning, it's up to the community of each game to decide how to handle it.
For example, Celeste have lots of accessibility options, and some of them completely trivialize the game difficulty (invincibility, infinite dashes). The main categories of the game don't allow accessibility options, but in the category extensions there are lots of game modes where everything is allowed.
Another example, In the Robot Wants It All leaderboard, there are in-game cheats you can buy with the game currency, like invincibility, super firepower or infinite jumps. In the ILs we separated the runs into "cheats" and "no cheats"; In the individual world categories we don't allow cheats at all; and in the main full-category of the game which requires you to get all achievements from scratch, we allow you to use whatever you want (after purchasing it from the shop, of course).
its pretty interesting. i would say normally cheats arent allowed cus they're cheats, but there are niche example like doom eternal any% where a cheat is used to perform a glitch.
and i guess a true any% run would involve using cheat codes?
In a speedrun, it would most likely be up to the community/moderators to split the categories or have it allowed. For me, it depends on how extreme the cheat is, intentional or not, and what the community thinks about it.
Depends on what it is.
Generally I don't think anyone has an issue with you enabling these cheats, but the problem tends to be that they can drastically change a speedrun and most times make them comically easy or unfun. That's why there's generally a category extension or subcategory for cheats enabled (or at least should be IMO) when it exists in games.