10 INCREDIBLE Video Game Secrets Found By Hacking

If there's one thing game developers love to do, it's fill their games with amusing Easter Eggs for players to spend precious hours uncovering for themselves.

Whether it's a sly reference to another game or entire hidden stories hiding in plain sight, discovering these secrets has become the priority of whole communities of fans.

Though never intended to be especially easy to track down in the first place, sometimes developers go one step further by hiding these secrets in places that were never meant to be found.

However, that hasn't stopped curious players from peeking behind the scenes through clever manipulation of all of the 1s and 0s that make up the game code itself to see what secrets they can find.

Whether it be developer in-jokes hidden in data files or clever tricks used behind the scenes, some of these can only be found by hacking into the game itself.

Though some video game hackers are often associated with cheating and other unsavoury practices, some tech-savvy players out there have used their hacking powers for good to uncover some truly fascinating discoveries.

For decades, video games and controversy have gone hand-in-hand. Ranging from the explicit content in infamous Atari game Custer's Revenge, the reactionary debates surrounding games and violence that continuously resurface, and the recent outcry about lootboxes and gambling, the world of gaming is never too far away from public scrutiny.

One other issue that's been raised towards the industry recently is that of gaming's addictive nature. With video game addiction officially recognised by the World Health Organisation, battle royale Fortnite - popular with younger demographics - has had a lot of the criticism aimed directly at it.

During their dive through the game's data, user FIreMonkey has uncovered how the game is combatting addiction. After playing for thee hours, a message is displayed telling players they've essentially played for too long. And as an added punishment for those who can't get enough of the colourful shooter, the message also states that their in-game earnings have been limited by 50% in addition to challenge progress being disabled.

However, the hacker was quick to highlight that these files are titled 'TencentPlayTimeLimit', Tencent being a government-backed Chinese company that plays a huge role in gaming in China.