Originally Posted by
Meph
Bingo.
They're just making duplicates of the desired weapon animations, then renaming the copies to overwrite the animations of guns they have access to.
It's an entirely clientside edit, and other players won't see the modifications, since the gani isn't overwritten on their client.
Their guns won't behave any differently, since it's just the animation that gets changed.
It's pretty much a skin that only you can see.
I wouldn't flatter them by calling it "hacking".
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I've seen people get jailed for editing files, yes.
Sometimes it could give a mechanical advantage to the person.
For example, if they modified a bullet that has an obnoxiously long bullet trail, to not have that trail.