Hacking savefiles and similar stuff (yourself, not just copying things on the web) help teach the key work habits of day to day programming. Problem solving, sticking to a problem, visualizing, decoding, basic computer architecture, tech docs, self starting, debugging, etc.

Gamer-motivated CS people with those skills will go far.

console hackers and game programmers have little overlap, though. If you've spent the time to understand VR/ED you probably want to do that, in which case you're not programming.