It seems the UK National Crime Agency doesn’t get how gaming works. The organization has put out a claim that modding games leads to hacking and other cyber crimes.
The following is from CNBC
Gaming websites could be spawning a new breed of cybercriminals, according to new research which claims that young people are being indoctrinated into hacking crimes via free and easily-accessible internet pages.
Websites and forums which provide cheat codes and modifications for video games are making it increasingly easy for young people to develop criminal skills and become involved in hacking chat rooms, a report by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has said.
This makes little sense. One could argue cheating devices could lead to minor crime as a form of hacking, but modding is a form of game design and artistry. If anything it had led to great things for the game industry, from new genres like the MOBA genre, to games like Counter Strike. Modding is not a slippery slope to cyber crime, and this is just more of the problem of poor reporting when it comes to video games.
As PVP Live has pointed out, this is no different from arguing that leading programing leads to cyber crime. It is a foolish argument and hurts people more than not.