You could say the same about anything, but cheating in multiplayer ruins the experience for others. Cheating in single-player? Great, we call those mods, but in a multiplayer game I'm happy to think of OP as a piece of shit for not just cheating but writing the cheats for others.
Even if it's just indirect competition, by giving yourself an advantage compared to others you affect what others percieve as a healthy benchmark for performance.
"Just neopets" isn't an excuse, you could say the same for any online game.
Cheaters even wreck just the scoreboards for some games. You might think a fake score submissions is about the least damaging thing since it doesn't directly effect others gameplay at all, but it still ruins the experience and affects the community's ability to compare and share genuine runs.
Being banned eventually is hardly a punishment, doubly so if they ever sold-on their ill-gotten gains for real money.
There wasn't a hint of contrition in OP's post, and the downvotes I'm receiving suggests that the culture of entitlement is so great now that cheating in multiplayer isn't even seen as bad anymore.
I hope you share that same energy for people doing high frequency trading or writing advertisement engines. Cheating in neopets is probably at the lowest end of harm caused by cheating and also hurts neopets devs more than it hurts other players.
I think it's reading into a lot into OPs comment. A lot of people look somewhat fondly on dumb/slightly illegal things they did as a teen, even if they would never do such a thing as an adult (nor encourage it in current teens). The downvotes you are getting are likely due to guidelines violations (be kind, curious, not snarky, etc) not due to your actual viewpoint.
