Manipulating the game can be a lot of fun, more than the game itself. In a way, it kind of becomes like a higher level kind of game. When done appropriately and not ruining other people's fun, that is. I've had good fun on friend's private servers and giving their shit code a good stress test.

I have zero respect for those that just download cheats and use them to pass off as skilled and ruin the fun for others. It's like ethical hacking: do it with permission or at least be transparent about it.

There's game servers out there to play against other cheaters, and it can truly be hilariously broken and entertaining. I've also been quite fascinated by Minecraft servers like 2b2t where cheating is basically necessary to survive at all. The exploit content and drama that have come out of this server is bonkers. But everyone knows they're playing against cheaters, the fun is seeing how you can outcheat your opponents.

There's also the whole speedrunning community, the ways people have broken games wide open. Fascinating and very entertaining stuff. The skills you need to perform a lot of those glitches are insane and extremely challenging. Hours of grinding to get frame perfect glitches work, several times during a run. It's a whole new puzzle, with so many more variables.

Why would someone cheat on games like CS2, Apex, Valorant and the likes, that I don't know. Some people are really just kind of losers I guess. I personally don't see the appeal, I'd want to be famous for the cheats and not even compete with non-cheaters because that's just plain unethical and unfun. There's also a big difference between finding dupes in Minecraft vs an aimbot in a competitive shooter.