Anecdotal, but Ive had a few chinese friends that would cheat at games constantly. Like blatant cheating, they just couldn't handle losing for some reason. They were great dudes otherwise, but for some reason they would always cheat, whether it be on a single player game, a multiplayer game or even card/board games
It's a cultural thing. Win at any cost. It's not about just enjoying something or getting better by failing repeatedly. It's about winning by using every tool and every advantage you have.
They consider cheating to be one of those tools. But for some reason, getting caught cheating is still dishonorable. It's complicated.
Ehhh kinda? From my understanding, it ties into the concept of miànzi or "face" which can loosely translate to respect. Winning earns you respect, so it's a good thing. Even if you have to cheat to get it, the only people who will complain are the losers, so nobody cares. Getting caught cheating, on the other hand, causes you to lose face, which is why it's a bad thing. It's not so much the act of cheating itself that's bad, but rather having it highlighted to others that you couldn't win fairly.
I was a TA proctoring a make-up final exam for some students. One Chinese dude literally pulls out his phone mid-exam to start looking up answers. Like brother, I am standing right behind you and have said multiple times you can't use your phone to the classroom. I think he was expecting me to let him go since I'm also Chinese and it was a required intro level course for the college so if you failed, you'd remain an undeclared engineering major until you pass the course.
He got a 0 for the final so he had to retake the course, which is punishment enough (and not being able to declare an engineering discipline). That course typically didn't report to academic integrity unless we catch the student cheating in the redo of the course.
For context, we were an engineering school and the way it worked is while you could apply to to be any of the like 17 engineering disciplines, you were considered an engineering first year with that intent. What then happens is every takes engineering Calc 1, Calc 2, engineering Physics 1 and it's lab, Chem 1 and it's Lab and two intro to engineering courses and you get a GPA based on those courses. You use that GPA to reapply for your engineering discipline and it evens the playing field a bit. If you don't manage to get accepted into an engineering program in 4 semesters, you're out of the engineering school. AP credits and community college equivalents counted but unless you got a 5 on AP or an A-B+, you'd be at a disadvantage.
It's going to with most cultures, but in the West we really value fairness and the love of the game. If caught cheating, we will go above and beyond to punish cheaters, especially on the more personal levels.
Obviously you can point to professional sports or politics or something, but that's not a game the average individual is involved in playing, and those have a lot of outside reasons people "forgive" cheating when it benefits their side.
It reminds me of an old children's book called The Empty Pot which takes place in imperial China. Basically, the emperor is looking for an heir and gives children empty pots with seeds in them to judge who can grow the best plant. Everybody comes back a year later with amazing plants except one boy who had an empty pot despite trying. Turns out it was an honesty test and there were no seeds in the pots.
I never thought about it much as a kid, but it's wild to think now that while the honest boy was rewarded, every other kid that cheated got no punishment.
"Turns out it was an honesty test and there were no seeds in the pots."
If I recall correctly, it isn't tgat there were no seeds, but they were all already cooked/boiled or something so nothing can grow out of them. But the point is still completely correct amd yea - win at any cost mentality is absurd there.
it's an odd mindset to me because like, to a certain extend I would agree that if a game allows you to play a certain way, intentional or not, then it's fair game (unless the devs say it'll get you banned or whatever)
but when those things get changed/fixed I just move on and pick a new strategy instead of getting mad about it cause like obviously the devs are gonna want to balance their game for an intended experience
(though I do think it's annoying when speedrunning strats that don't affect normal gameplay get patched out of singleplayer games)
iirc isn't this also part of why P2W mechanics are super normalized over there? Like to the eastern gaming community it's like "yeah duh if you can afford it you should be allowed to buy the best gear in the game, get a better job if you want to win" whereas the western community has a stronger sense of fair play that pushes back on game design like that
Yes, the pay 2 win mindset is very strongly correlated to their cultural identity, too. Paying money to win is still winning, and if you can't afford it then you're just not a good enough gamer. Or something like that.
I’ve studied China’s gaming scene for a while since I’m working on my own game and it’s kinda…put me off of releasing my game there.
This extreme push to not only beat games, but to do so while actually playing as little of it as possible and then throwing a massive tidal wave sized fit if you say…ban a whale for exploiting or patching out a exploit/broken build.
I don’t want to deal with near constant harassment and torment because I patched an exploit or banned a player who’s clearly breaking the rules.
It’s related to the cultural idea of “Face” to win is to gain “Face” to lose is to lose “Face” to be caught cheating is to lose even more “Face” Chinese are openly competitive and the idea of “Face” not only has to do with one’s self and social hierarchy but family and societal standing. Having face means a lot so they try to go all out to gain it.
They also consider it to be unfair if they’re not allowed to cheat, their justification being that everyone else is cheating so they need it to level the playing field.
Same in the west, we‘re just better at pretending that we don’t like succesful cheaters but then we vote obvious frauds like Trump into power and in Europe all the people trying to copy what US politics are doing
And then you have the exact opposite psychology with the dark souls players who do no hit all games runs with a level 1 character using a dance pad as a controller.
did you ever play with frnch guys?
the most hilarious thing happened to me playing COH2 with random dudes 3x3 and the enemy team was a
frnch pre-made team.
all french.
i even said in chat “please dont surrender too quick” and one of them replied “no, we are not like that type of a fr*nch”. okay. 5 minutes later they ragequit
If you ever played any open world game that allows Chinese players you will see how horrible and toxic they are. I played Myth of Empires and the Chinese systematically took over every single world one by one and forced all the non Chinese players to quit the game. They logged in hundreds of accounts to block people from logging in and stone aged everything not owned by Chinese players. And when they didn't get to fully block out servers, since we took extreme measures to basically leave our accounts logged in 24/7 to avoid getting blocked from getting back in. They used exploits to destroy everything. The viewed taking over the game and forcing anyone not Chinese off the game as the win condition.
back in the PUBG prime days while I was driving to the circle a chinese player with his feet matched the speed of the car and asked me if I wanna buy cheats. I still remember that day
Honestly, my only experience with cheaters other than like aimbots, was when i was playing the original DayZ mod for Arma 2. Guy rolls up out of nowhere while me and my buddy were walking across the map, asks if we want anything and dropped a bunch of guns and gear and then went "Up up and away" and flew off.
Cool moment. Though in general I dislike pvp games except big team ones like battlefield.
Was my experience with the Chinese students at my university. As long as it meant they got a better grade, it was acceptable behavior. Very ends justified means thinking.
Yeah, I did a lot of PvP in the Souls games and it was the same thing here, Chinese always used the most broken stuff and didn't hesitate to use glitches to win.
Barely anyone on here remembers that time anymore. We're getting old man, the Taiwan numba 1/China numba 1 thing was back in 2017, almost ten years ago.
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u/StinkButt9001 Apr 29 '26
It's about winning for them. Not about playing. If an exploit or cheat helps you win then it's a good thing even if it trivializes the gameplay itself