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A quarter of a century ago, cheating in video games was normal. A generation of video game fans have IDDQD and IDKFA burned into their brains to unlock god mode and weapons in Doom. But a couple of decades later, cheating is not only uncommon — it’s rarely even an option in most games. This is something that startup Megadev wants to change with its Plitch software service.
Plitch is a tool that makes it easy to cheat in games on PC. And since I’m sure you’re wondering, that doesn’t apply to online multiplayer games. Instead, Plitch uses tools called trainers to adjust variables in a game’s memory to give players invulnerability in single-player and offline games. I spoke with Megadev chief executive officer Robert Maroschik for our How Games Make Money podcast, and he explained who Plitch is for.
“We knew that the people asking for cheats were people who really loved the games they were playing but simply didn’t have time,” said Maroschik. “That hasn’t changed. We love to say our target group isn’t the typical gamers; our target group is the dads. We have more customers older than 65 than we do younger than 25, with a median age of around 35.”
This is an audience that often has more money than time, but it’s also one that grew up using cheats or tools like a Game Genie. Plitch is one way to bring that back. But it just comes down to making the business model work.
“The main cost is personnel to keep up with games,” said Maroschik. “To build the initial set of cheats isn’t that hard at all. But once a game gets patched, we have to redo most of the work in about half the time. We have a team to build the trainers and then an even larger team of patchers.”
That’s where the subscription costs come in. While the site does offer up to 15,000 cheat codes for more than 2,900 games for free, it gates even more behind its premium tier. That starts at $24 for 3 months, but you can get a year for $60.
And while you may not want something like that today, Megadev will have Plitch waiting for you if your skill decline as you get older or busier.