I'm not a heavy gamer so don't have great insight, but it seems like you might be undervaluing the problem.
> I find it really difficult to see the value proposition for anti-cheat companies in spending time developing that functionality.
Let's say 1% of the population cheats. Maybe that's high
(or low, but I could easily see 1% of the real world population having less than stellar morals w.r.t. cheating). So you play an online game with 20 people in it. That means on average one out of every 5 games there is a cheater in it.
That ruins the experience for you (and everyone in it). Not to mention now because there are so many legit cheaters, people start mistaking really talented players of cheating. Accusing them, starting back and forth arguments online which worsens the experience even if they're not cheating. This adds to the frequency of assumed cheating. Then one of those 20 people decides the way they'll fix it is they'll download a cheat a next time someone on the other team cheats then they'll start cheating too. And so they do, but sometimes they do it when someone is actually just good an not cheating and so they worsen the game.
Overall if you're a company, trying to run an online game you need a positive environment where people will want to return to play. Cheaters very quickly ruin the trust in a game, and that leads to real financial impact.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear, I’m specifically talking about detecting PCIe cards that modify RAM, as the parent comment mentioned. I appreciate the need for anti-cheat software, but surely the number of people who will not only cheat, but also do that kind of modification is vanishingly small?
> I find it really difficult to see the value proposition for anti-cheat companies in spending time developing that functionality.
Let's say 1% of the population cheats. Maybe that's high (or low, but I could easily see 1% of the real world population having less than stellar morals w.r.t. cheating). So you play an online game with 20 people in it. That means on average one out of every 5 games there is a cheater in it.
That ruins the experience for you (and everyone in it). Not to mention now because there are so many legit cheaters, people start mistaking really talented players of cheating. Accusing them, starting back and forth arguments online which worsens the experience even if they're not cheating. This adds to the frequency of assumed cheating. Then one of those 20 people decides the way they'll fix it is they'll download a cheat a next time someone on the other team cheats then they'll start cheating too. And so they do, but sometimes they do it when someone is actually just good an not cheating and so they worsen the game.
Overall if you're a company, trying to run an online game you need a positive environment where people will want to return to play. Cheaters very quickly ruin the trust in a game, and that leads to real financial impact.