How cheat codes have always been an integral part of the GTA series

When players think of their time in GTA, they probably look back, with fondness, on their time completing memorable story missions or causing a ruckus in the city. While chances are purists chose to play the game without cheats, the adventurous bunch has always found joy in the rampant chaos of these codes.

Thinking of Grand Theft Auto without thinking of its numerous, memorable cheat codes is darn near impossible. Since the early 2000s, Rockstar Games has taken enormous pride in including cheat codes in its prized franchise.

While most AAA studios and publishers grew out of their cheat code phase, Rockstar hasn't and probably won't.

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Why cheat codes were a necessity during the 80s and early 2000s

Simply put, developers did not have access to the kind of technology needed to bypass entire game levels to test out certain key areas specifically. Instead, they would have to wade through countless challenges and spend more time in a level than they needed to.

One of the most ingenious solutions to this problem was the inclusion of cheat codes. The developers would come up with lines of code that afforded them certain abilities such as God Mode (Infinite Health), teleportation, and things of that sort.

These lines of code allowed them to test out their mechanics efficiently. As a little gift to fans, the devs would keep those lines of code in the game and hand them out to players as cheat codes, allowing them to acquire special abilities.

This is why most games from that era included several cheat codes, some of which achieved cult status, like the Konami code. GTA followed suit, and every title since the original has included a plethora of cheat codes.

In a general sense, it is now 2021, and for nearly a decade and a half, cheat codes have become scarce. But why is that?

Dev kits available for studios today do not necessitate the need for cheat codes. The developers can now bypass entire sections to get to the area that is the root cause of the issue, thus making such codes relics of an era gone by.

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Cheat codes and the GTA experience

New ways to experience the game

Cheat codes are often of varying kinds, some decrease the level of the challenge, while others can be used for fun and to cause mayhem. GTA has always had a decent number of cheat codes of both kinds and even combinations of the two.

While Rockstar has occasionally tried to dial back on the ridiculous, especially with GTA 4, they decided that the series' identity simply begets cheat codes. Players would ideally like to spend hours upon hours in Los Santos or any of the tremendous open-world cities of GTA.

Yet, they need to have a good enough reason to hang around and experience all that the game has to offer. The possibility for emergent gameplay is increased ten-fold when games hand players cheat codes. With the use of cheat codes, they can find new ways to experience the title and do things they might not have been capable of before.

While cheat codes are used to decrease the level of challenge, most gamers use cheats in GTA purely to mess with the game world and have fun.

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Will GTA 6 include cheat codes?

As recently as 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar allowed players to use a number of cheat codes. This should indicate that it is a studio that still believes in the core enjoyment found in cheat codes and how integral it is to their brand.

GTA 6 is still so far in the distance that any predictions about the game are liable to not age very well in the years to come. Yet, given how Rockstar is dedicated to its vision regardless of the trends in the industry, it wouldn't be a surprise to see GTA 6 shipped with a bunch of cheat codes.

At this point, cheat codes and GTA go together like PB&J, and it simply wouldn't feel like a Grand Theft Auto experience if players couldn't drive an SUV on water.