DT misses the main dynamic why so many cheat in online games.
https://farside.link/invidious/watch?v=dem8FsXXV7AIt's basically like an arms-race cascade.Somebody makes the first move by making a game-hack and going online to "cheat-bully" a bunch of other players. They don't consider this unfair or petty, because they had the skill to make the cheat-program and technically they use their own skill to beat the other players. Obviously those other players do not see it that way, and some of them will make their own cheat-programs or pay somebody to do it, so they can cheat-retaliate. They want to be ready, the next time somebody cheat-bullies them, so they can switch on their cheat-program and even the score. They will also use their cheat-program against regular players, maybe because they mistake somebodies luck as cheating. And then more people get annoyed at this and that sets off an expanding cheat-wave. The reason why this is so unstoppable is because countering cheaters with cheats is rational behavior on an individual level (game-theory: retaliation in kind), it is only irrational on a collective level.
Developing anti-cheat software is not a effective method to fix this problem, it's just containment to keep it at bay. Anti-cheat software isn't even intended to solve the problem, it's only intended to counter-act it. That's the business-model. If they make an effective solution that fixes this problem once and for all, they won't have repeat customers. It's also very plausible that the people making the anti-cheat-software are also the ones making the cheat-software. After-all the most profitable way to exploit a conflict is to supply both sides with "weapons".
There is a simple solution.Step 1 A server-side algorithm measures the primary skill characteristics of the game
Step 2 Sort people so they play against others with a similar skill level.
Step 3 All the cheaters will register as having a superhuman-skill-level and sort them self into a few cheater-servers.
Step 4 Non cheaters will register as having a human-skill-level sort them self into the non-cheater serveres.
Problem solved People who want to cheat for the sake of hacking the game as a programming challenge can do that, people who want to play fair will not be bothered. Only Assholes that seek to ruing the fun for others will loose out.
So shooter-games for example one would measure aiming-accuracy and reaction-time. People who use aim-bots would measure as having really high accuracy and super-short reaction-time, and there would be no need to determine whether or not somebody is cheating and no risk of false-positives. The objective server-side measurements will reliably sort the cheaters into the cheater-corner, where they can continue one-upping each other until they have fully automated playing the game and can get hired by game-companies to build really advanced non-player-bots. Everybody else will have a pleasant experience playing the game as intended against players with a similar skill-level.
Thank you for attending my Ted talk on first-world problems