Inside gaming’s cheat problem
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We explore the costly and growing problem of cheating in video games. It’s an issue that frustrates many players, but what about the impact it’s having on the multi-billion-dollar industry?
We reveal how cheats undermine online play, harm reputations in esports, and cost studios big money, speaking to those who’ve made the cheats, and those trying to stop them.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Presented and produced by Will Chalk
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
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(Picture: Gamer playing online video game at home. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk. |
| 0:11.0 | For nearly as long as there have been video games, there have been video game cheats. |
| 0:16.0 | But in the days of arcade machines or single-player console games, it was all part of the fun. |
| 0:22.2 | After all, who cared if you beat the game a bit easier? |
| 0:25.2 | You were only cheating yourself. |
| 0:28.1 | Fast forward to today, and things are a little different. |
| 0:33.4 | In a world where hundreds of millions of people go online every day to test their skills against strangers from across the world, |
| 0:40.9 | cheating is no longer just a mild annoyance. |
| 0:43.6 | It's one of the number one things that takes a player out of a game, right? |
| 0:46.4 | It's not knowing if what's happening is fair or not. |
| 0:50.4 | When you can't get that under control, it becomes the Wild West and no one can trust |
| 0:54.6 | anything anymore. But just how badly is it damaging one of the world's biggest industries? |
| 0:59.6 | You can be creating a game, spending a lot of money creating a game, and then it gets |
| 1:04.1 | ransacked by cheaters, completely disrupting the economic model that you face and forecasts |
| 1:08.8 | everything around. And what can be done to stop it? |
| 1:11.6 | You know, there's no, hey, you've been left alone, maybe you had internet, no, but no. |
| 1:15.8 | The internet is restricted. |
| 1:17.4 | We're there to police. |
| 1:18.6 | We'll be finding out, as well as meeting people who've made and sold game cheats for big |
| 1:23.7 | money and paid the price. |
| 1:25.8 | You know, bam, you see all of your details, just online, and saying that you're getting |
... |
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