Let me get this one thing out of the way, first.
Language in itself is in constant change, so yes, I am representing the bitching old people – somewhat. Definitions of words get replaced here and there, that’s perfectly normal. So, what we have here is a bit of a clash of generations, but that’s why I’m trying to tell you:
The hacking scene is way older and actually broader than video games. Hackers are people that are generally interested in making things do stuff, they weren’t intended to do. This is most known when it comes to computers, but it’s not restricted to them.
Take for example the sub-genre of phreaking, which allowed people to make free phone calls or have all sorts of other fun with the, back then, analog phone lines. Long story short: they invented (their own) electronic devices to emit the exact frequencies, which the companies used to control those lines. John Draper’s (Cpt. Crunch) wikipedia is a good read about that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper#Phreaking).
Here we have people putting in a lot of time and effort to figure out which tones are doing what, when you play them into your phone. Just like this example, there’s heaps of other non-computer stuff you can do, that qualifies for hacking.
A friend of mine just told me the other day how he could hack their nearby bowling alley. If you threw a gutter ball only hard enough, you could trigger the sensors of the outside pins. Kind of cheating, too. He figured it out, was excited about his findings, but didn’t use it to actually gain an advantage, afterwards. The excitement of having found this little loop hole was satisfaction enough. Try it, it really is. :)
A hacker will acknowledge you as one, as long as you meet these two requirements: You are interested in what can be done beyond the inventors/manufacturers intention and you do this with a passion, figuring out for yourself (or together with others), but never just use the results.
Applied back to video games, this means:
Hackers are the people that sat down and spent hours on end to dig into the games code in order to find weaknesses to exploit and write other programs (cheats) to leverage those weaknesses. There’s many hackers that write cheats, but (apart from testing their own code) never actually use those programs (cheats) themselves. They are not interested in feeling superior by bashing people in online games. They are interested in feeling superior in their programming or analytic skills, compared to the game developers. Well, I admit, this is also a rather antique, very idealistic worldview. I think most people that offer game cheats nowadays are simply interested in money. :/
There’s still a huge distinction to the people you encounter in-game. Those are the people that, in fact, are looking for the quick fix. Feeling superior in a matter of seconds. Maybe pay some of money, download a program, run it, done. How much skill does that involve? None whatsoever I’d say, right?
That’s what makes them cheaters, not hackers. They cheat the game or, even worse, nowadays other people online. They didn’t hack the game themselves. Someone else did it for them.
That’s why calling those cheaters ‘hackers’ is an insult to all actual hackers. :)
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workofprogress 