I feel like the article came down way harder on cheaters then my own philosophy. "give me 5 minutes alone with a hacker"? Real life assault is much worse then video game cheating. The author then mentions justice systems aren't very involved, and I'm fine with the law not being involved with people hacking games. Cheating is relative. Some people think any custom mods, even on single player games, is cheating. I remember plenty of people thought speed mods on DDR were cheating. Today in league if you use timers for events some people called it cheating. Studios are responsible for creating an end to end expirience. It's up to them to lock down a game (like CS) or leave it open (skyrim), and it's their responsibility to enforce the game play vision they create. I don't cheat in games, but I understand why some people do. Yes it's annoying, but it shouldn't be a crime, and cheaters don't deserve universal hatred.
I don't think cheating is relative in this regard. Yes, cheating in single player to bypass mechanics the developer created is in some cases bad, but you as the player are only inflicting the "pain" upon yourself. In the case of multiplayer games I think a line is drawn, now your need to bypass mechanics is affecting other players experiences. I don't think that is fair or right in any circumstance. I don't believe that they should be universally hated (even though in the article anyone the journalist spoke to pretty much knew that cheating was a bad thing), but I don't think there is any instance where someone has a valid reason to cheat in a multiplayer setting.
You picked one example of mine and ignored the others :) DDR is competitive and multiplayer as well as League of Legends, and in both of those games cheating is ambiguous. Even in counterstrike some people have water-cooled 5,000 rigs, some people consider that cheating in a casual setting.
You say its wrong in every circumstance, does that include disabled gamers? Or parents wanting to play with their kids? What about people writing bots to learn how to program AI? Or programs that compensate for something like bad hardware or high ping, not scripts that autoaim but help reduce issues. I know I'm being devils advocate a little bit here, but I disagree with the concept that cheaters are bad people or that it should require government involvement. People play games however they want, it's up to studios to drive that experience.
The speed mod one is something I don't know enough about, but I thought the general consensus was that they were not actually cheats. If for whatever reasons the speed mods were impeding upon a worldwide/nationwide leader board where people were ranked, and speed mods gave an advantage score-wise then yea cheating. The league of legends one is not a cheat because anyone can simply grab a watch, and time it. When I used to play it, some people just used watches. The point is that the advantage being provided by the timer isn't something the other team cannot use equally. In terms of Counter-Strike being someone who played a lot. There is a line drawn about cheating that goes along the same logic as the timers in LoL. If I run a wall hack, or aimbot I am accomplishing something that even if you had a $20,000 rig you couldn't surpass. Do we call people who have good ping cheaters because theirs is lower than everyone elses? None of the examples you presented pose any threat to the competitive nature of a game. A family member playing with his family isn't hurting anyone outside his family. If they get pissed they can tell him to stop. The person making bots to learn how to program AI is learning to program AI at which point the bot never even has to touch a competitive setting. Like I said before when you bypass mechanics set forth by the developer to mess with the experience of the other players that isn't fair under any circumstance.
I completely disagree with cheating in any kind of competitive environment, the article was only talking about casual play. I assumed these bots would be easily detected and banned in high level tournament play? Also a very, very large number of the league community disagrees with you on the timer issue. It's not a debate worth getting into, but that's kinda my point. Plenty of gameplay is relative, and people get very absolute about how games "should" be played.
I'm at work now, but I will respond best I can. What I'm saying is that cheating is noticeable by the fact that it is an unattainable advantage by normal means. Whether what you say is cheating is up to debate, but what I'm referring to is the more clean cut cheating which is what the article seemed to be pointing to especially the part where they go indepth about the closet cheaters masking their behavior. I don't think what you are referring to is the same cheating as I am referring to.
Yeah I think we are approaching it from different angles. I tend to view things from the more hacker side of things, and was trying to offer the perspective from the other side of the fence. In general, almost no one supports egregious cheating, myself included.