[korm]

My experience is that there were tons of cheaters in the middle, most populated ranks, and it cleared up at Global, or at least the cheats were subtle.

I am certain of this because I climbed to global a few times, and I was tracking VAC bans in my game history. In the top ranks, every other game eventually had a player get VAC ban days or weeks later. In the middle ranks it was one or more players every game.

However the cheaters bothered me less than having to play the team's therapist in every game the moment we lost one round!

[tstrimple]

In my experience, at lower levels you’re more likely to see cheaters spinning like a tornado landing headshots immediately on anyone who pops into view. At higher levels you’re more likely to find people toggling on cheats only for clutch game moments. They are objectively good players, but use cheats tactically to get that last bit of boost. One of these is far easier to detect and ban. So it can give the impression there are fewer cheaters at high levels. I’m not convinced that’s the case.

[willis936]

I check the VAC history of my matchmaking player history every once in a while. Not a single cheater in nearly a decade. There are two plausible explanations.

1. Cheating is not at all common.

2. Cheaters have low trust factor and you never see them if you don't have a low trust factor.

In either case I'm not very bothered. Don't put malware on my computer because some players haven't spent enough time in the game yet.