Online hackers

Online hackers are a type of hacker that goes online and hacks mostly multiplayer games such as MOBAs, MMOs, etc. They are best known for ruining gameplay for everyone, and some consoles involve bans. Even though this practice has existed since the PC-era, it has moved onto consoles such as the mh:awesomegames:Xbox 360, mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles.

Examples

 * In Splatoon, it was possible for one to modify the save file. It was later discovered that if the plaza of Inkopolis loaded with objects such as an Octoling or an unreleased weapon, it will crash the player's console. On October 2015, trouble began when there were reports about a hacker crashing people's save files. Thankfully, Nintendo made a patch to mitigate the crashes so when an Octoling or unreleased weapon loads it won't freeze the player's game anymore. However, that didn't stop Japanese hackers from taking over the game, such as modifying the weapons to be god-like and making their characters move at extremely high speeds. What made this worse was that hackers found a way to bypass their console bans by spoofing the console's ID address, so Nintendo cannot tell who they're banning.
 * The Mario Kart series has had a bit of a hacker problem ever since Mario Kart Wii, with this problem spreading to other games in the series such as Mario Kart 8. Hackers often use tactics like having infinite amounts of certain items (such as Blue Shells) or teleporting to give them an unfair advantage.
 * Electronic Arts provides very little moderation within their games, causing many games to be prone to hacking and the hackers often getting away without punishment. In Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, many hackers use hacked decks with 40 of the same card (usually 40 Admiral Navy Beans or 40 Quickdraw Con Mans) and usually doesn't get caught until months or even years later. In the FIFA series, hackers could also spoof matches to gain coins quickly. Other examples including:
 * The PC version of Titanfall has been unplayable for years due to one hacker who took over the game. What made this worse is EA actually released, and keeping Titanfall on Steam despite its unplayable state. This actually resulted another hacker (which has no relation to the Titanfall hacker) hacking Apex Legends as a form of protest against EA and Respawn for lack of fixes. Instead of fixing security issues, EA/Respawn chose to close Titanfall servers.
 * The PC version of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 is often infested with hackers, in which many of them are using mods to play bosses/scrapped characters (as seen in the picture above) online or using a damage hack to gain unfair advantages.
 * In Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, it was possible to implement a "fake" custom mission by proxying the 3DS to another download server. This allows players to download custom homemade missions, and even make insane creations such as a gigantic Great Jaggi, or even ways to cheapen the game's grind.
 * Dungeon Defenders and Borderlands for the Xbox 360 are notable for their "hacked" equipment, with attacks up to the billions, infinite stats. In Dungeon Defenders, it is possible to modify the character to limit break it via a save editor, and edit the weapons.
 * In most Call of Duty games, hackers will use an aimbot where they auto-aim at a player and kill them from the other side of the map. They are able to kill the player even if they're behind a lot of walls or an impenetrable wall. Despite FaZe making quickscoping a thing, hackers would mainly act like they actually killed someone and they'll say that they're not hacking, they're just that good!
 * The PlayStation Network used to go down frequently due to hackers, leaving many people unable to access the PS3 or PS4's online features; especially after the infamous PSN outage of 2011.
 * In Mobile Legends, players use hacks on characters, money and even diamonds.
 * Hackers are rampant in the arcade racing game Asphalt 8: Airborne, and Gameloft does a very poor job of keeping them at bay. Hackers are most common in time-limited events and are capable of achieving times only the best players can record. Sometimes hackers can even get actually good players banned.
 * This problem has gotten worse, and Gameloft has a higher chance of permabanning good players and keeping cheaters due to Vivendi's order to prioritize their own earnings since the hostile takeover.
 * Hackers are also common in Need for Speed: No Limits, sometimes they can be seen driving unreleased cars, max out cars in illegitimate ways, or hack their cars to drastically increase its speed or give it infinite nitro. Some hackers will even have their cars launch into the air like jets! What makes them more ridiculous is that multiplayer in NFS:NL is not very rewarding.
 * Disney's Toontown Online had a hacker known as Mavericks rise in 2010 who claimed in the forums to have created the first Python exploit for the game. Mavericks used the exploit to wreak havoc on the game itself; resulting in server attacks, and even a DDoS of the website itself.
 * Brave Frontier in January 2017 had a runaway hacker inject items in players' accounts, leading to many accounts being banned for a day. The hacker was never found, but some people at a hackers' forums managed to get some people unbanned via unknown programs during the time of the incident.
 * Back when the PlayStation 2 games had online services, many of the games had no cheat detection from users using cheat devices which modified codes in the game, allowing many players to cheat on the SmackDown vs. Raw games before they went to the next generation.
 * Grand Theft Auto Online on Xbox 360 and PS3 had a major hacker problem from almost the day it launched all the way to the servers closing on those versions. These hackers did various exploits like becoming invincible, spawn trapping players with aimbots or explosions, attaching giant objects on players so their field of view is obstructed, kicking players out of lobbies or starting DDoS attacks on them, erasing all reports on their account, or dropping money bags on players (the latter wasn't too controversial though as it allowed players to avoid grinding missions for cash or buying the infamous Shark Cards). The hacking problem once again almost instantly resurfaced on the PC version when it launched and has continued there. The PS4 and Xbox One versions are reportedly having hackers start to pop up, though it's not as bad as it is on PC or was on the other platforms.
 * LittleBigPlanet 1, 2, and the PS3 version of 3 had hackers in 2021 manage to edit the in-game messages to contain profane and offensive language which contributed to Sony shutting down the servers for those games along with LittleBigPlanet PS Vita.

Why Most Of Them Suck

 * 1) They ruin the player experience for everyone: Many of them use cheats just to always win in a game, so they possibly might not know how to play it.
 * 2) They can exploit bugs to glitch up the game and crash other people's games.
 * 3) The enemy team would mainly defend the hacker regardless of the rules the hacker broke.
 * 4) They can break the immersion in the game.
 * 5) They can steal people's personal information and hack into their online account.
 * 6) Some of them try to act all intimidating when they talk to you. They will often threaten to hack your console/account.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Some hackers actually use cheats for fun and entertainment, like fighting other hackers in a private server or... be funny.
 * 2) Some games can be patched to prevent hackers from playing them with cheats again, like how Super Mario Bros. 35 got a patch that would stop coin hackers.
 * 3) It can sometimes be funny when a hacker causes destructive mayhem.

How to spot a Hacker

 * 1) Their username consists of a bunch of random symbols or a barcode.
 * 2) Strange character appearance.
 * 3) When a bunch of crazy stuff happens in the game.
 * 4) Strange movement.
 * 5) Having a character/item that isn't available yet.