Gabe Newell Says Developers Shouldn’t Mistake Unexpected Player Actions for Hacking

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell once made an interesting point about game design: developers shouldn’t automatically treat unexpected player behavior as cheating, hacking, or something that needs to be corrected.

During a 2013 talk, Newell discussed how some of gaming’s most memorable moments can emerge when players do something developers never anticipated.

“One of the biggest mistakes game developers make is to mistake a genuinely entertaining action by a player as hacking.”

Newell pointed to one of the most famous incidents in MMO history as an example: the assassination of Lord British in Ultima Online.

During a public event in 1997, Richard Garriott was appearing in-game as his well-known character, Lord British. The character was normally effectively invulnerable, but circumstances surrounding the event left him vulnerable. A player known as Rainz took advantage of the opportunity, used a fire field spell, and killed Lord British in front of the assembled players.

It became a legendary moment in online gaming history precisely because it wasn’t something the developers had intended to happen.

Newell argued that rather than treating such an unexpected event as something that needed to be undone, developers should consider allowing the game world to respond naturally.

“They should have let that instance turn into whatever an instance turned into after they killed off Lord British.”

The broader idea is particularly relevant to sandbox games and MMOs. Players will inevitably discover strategies, interactions and possibilities that developers never considered. Unless those actions genuinely exploit vulnerabilities or negatively affect other players, unexpected behavior can sometimes become part of what makes a game memorable.

The Lord British assassination is arguably a perfect example of that phenomenon. Nearly three decades later, people still talk about a player unexpectedly killing one of gaming’s supposedly untouchable characters.

Sometimes players breaking the developer’s plan isn’t the problem.

It can be the story.

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