But what are you to do? You're actually very average at games and you want to be the best. You search through magazines and web pages until you find the Holy Grail: an invincibility-cheat. Here's the answer. No longer do you have to hide from the bullets and bombs. Now you can deal death and destruction with impunity.

So bad has this phenomenon become that whole multiplayer games have been brought to their knees. Roving bands of killers stalk online RPGs like Ultima Online, their sole gratification coming from dealing death to any player that crosses their path, with no regard for any of the finer points of the game. Other players have hacked the combat system to the point that they press a button and everyone else on their screen dies. This is no longer gaming but serial killing by twisted people for whom the misery of others is a tonic.

So who's harmed? Well, everybody else and, ultimately, the game itself. There can be nothing worse than patiently getting good at a game, catching some cannon fodder in your sights and fragging away, only to see the other man turn and, without taking any damage at all, fry your ass. Imagine having played an RPG as a character for months, patiently building up a unique player, when some bastard just walks up to you and for no apparent reason chops off your head while remaining invincible to your counter-attack. Annoyed? Oh yes.

You see, unlike the single player who only cheats himself, the multiplayer cheat deceives others and robs them of the entire gaming experience. What joy is there in playing an invincible enemy whose only pleasure is your doom? There's a very good reason why level designers don't make single-player games this way and it's because nobody wants to play an unplayable game. At a stroke, the multiplayer cheat performs the ultimate gaming sin, purely because they can't be bothered to learn to play by the rules.