Fifteen hackers have been arrested in China for a PUBG hack. News titles for this story are clickbaity, and would lead you to believe that the arrests occurred over cheating, which probably is illegal anyway, since it involves defrauding other players in an online gaming community of an experience that they pay money for and involves tampering with software programs that are protected by federal laws and international treaties, but I digress.

The arrests occurred over a Trojan horse in the cheat codes distributed, which then proceeded to mine that person’s computer for information. Most of us probably know someone who thinks that they are some kind of genius just because they can use the internet to download movies, video games, music, and lots of other stuff without paying for it, not knowing that those who provide these files illegally take what they can from them, as well.

Let’s get real here: hackers don’t do what they do out of the goodness of their hearts. What they are doing is highly illegal, and if caught, they can face some heavy penalties (millions of dollars in fines and years in federal pound-me-in-the-stinkhole prison). They’re taking an extraordinary risk in distributing something illegally, which they wouldn’t likely do unless they got something in return that could make it worth the risk of spending years in jail, where there are no video games, or much fun to be had at all, for that matter. We’ve already established that they have no problem with stealing from multi-million-dollar companies, which have legal teams that could retaliate against them big-time. Why wouldn’t they also steal from you, someone who can pretty much do nothing about it, if they can get away with it? If someone is taking the risk of going to jail for years, they’d likely take anything that they can to justify the risk.

Of course, your kid brother probably thinks that they’re safe because they also downloaded free anti-virus programs from the internet, which are just about the digital equivalent of placebos when it comes to locating, removing, and preventing Trojan horses. Then, after having illegally downloaded some files, connections for everyone else on the network slows down the moment that they open their cheap laptops as they unwittingly send piles of information to people who benefit financially from their illegal activity.

People who cheat in video games ruin the online experience for the rest of us, and people who download stuff illegally ruin the bandwidth for everyone else on the network, so I feel like laughing a little when they get what’s coming to them. They really can’t expect much in the way of sympathy if they get caught.