Then there's CS:GO, whose developers refuse to use intrusive practices to counter cheating. And the game is ruined by rampant cheating. (Neither for nor against. Just saying.)
If it's online, it's full of cheaters. One of the major problems (with steam) is the price of games in different regions. While a game might me cost me/you 20 dollars, it might sell in say Russia for 4.99. Add a popular steam sell to the mix and now we're buying licenses for pennies on the dollars, maybe even less than a dollar. We can cheat with these accounts or sell them to other cheaters for double the price we paid. Now cheaters can easily access new/fresh steam accounts and never worry about getting banned on their main account.
It's almost sad to see how badly anti-cheat software works. There are entire economies built around cheating. We used to combat this by being able to manage/run our own game servers with staff dedicated to the experience but very few games still support managing your own server. It will always be cat and mouse.
I'm still playing PUBG, though just FPP, and rarely run into what is obviously a cheater - maybe once every two months? But while things have got better, you're right, when things were really, really bad it hurt the game's community terribly.
I do think that anti-cheat helps, if the developers are mostly engaged with it, but it's a long fight over a long time. Most of the strategies to do with 'ban waves' - ie, not banning cheaters immediately - are pragmatic concessions to that reality.
EFT getting ruined by cheating is such a tragedy, too. Most immersive and, well, interesting and unique FPS out there (imo). I still play it though, and only encounter cheaters on certain high loot maps at this point (Reserve and Labs).
I've played a thousand hours of csgo and have ran into very few cheaters. I can't even recall a case in the past two years. I have checked my previous matches for future VAC bans and I think only 4 had them.
I'm pretty sure that cheating in online multiplayer games is such a problem that if you gave players the option of playing in a anticheat-only pool vs. a no-anticheat pool, after a few weeks/months almost everyone would be in the former.
CSGO's anti-cheat has many more issues than not being kernel-level. It's practically abandoned and doesn't even catch very blatant cheating (spin botting, etc).
A few months ago, their secondary system, "Trust Factor", was broken for an unknown period of time, which the communication to the community was a single tweet. During that period (probably a few weeks?), there was blatant cheaters in half the games I played.
I've moved to playing FACEIT (a third-party matchmaking service) recently, partly due to anti-cheat. I don't remember the last time I saw a cheater in FACEIT, while CSGO's matchmaking has cheaters in around 10% of my games (average skill player, ~2k hours over 7 years, high Trust Factor).
Faceit is really good for an anticheat. It's just that the skill floor is too high to encapsulate casual users, otherwise it would probably kill matchmaking. Cheats cost $60+ and cheat providers get killed often by detection waves
It seems like removing incentive beyond trolling is the best solution. Whose spinning up a cluster of bots if you can’t level up and sell digital loot? Market places for digital items has to be the dumbest thing ever in gaming. CS 1.6 was fun and the only thing you could customize was your graffiti spray, and there wasn’t a marketplace for them. You just added an image you liked.
CS:GO would need to separate Linux and Windows users for any reasonable attempt at creating a kernel level detection that works, wouldn't they?
Because of the steam deck that would be pretty bad business, so maybe it's less about intrusiveness and more about that valve can't, without destroying their hedge against a Windows monoculture in gaming.
I've been a silver shitter since the Gaussian normalization of the ranks. I used to be MR2 back in the day. It doesn't (or maybe it does?) help that even the worst players are better than the average player 5 years ago. I think the trust factor walled garden is something special. Be polite for a long time and be rewarded with other polite players who don't cheat. My silver matches are great. People communicate, people play strats, no one knows smokes or can react sub 150 ms or snap headshots. I work a day job and have a home to maintain (not a house, I'm not rich), SO, and pet to take care of on top of other hobbies. Silver these days is not for losers.
Then there's EFT (BattlEye) ruined by rampant cheating.
Then there's (was?) Combat Arms (multiple anti cheats over the years) ruined in-part by rampant cheating.
I wouldn't mind _that_ much if anti-cheats actually helped, but they don't.