The reason anti-cheat penalties don't really do anything is because people can just create a new account (on a free-to-play game) or play 20-60 dollars when they get detected. Video game developers usually won't ban cheaters for several weeks because it makes it harder to tell what program caused the ban. But it also gives you basically a guaranteed period of time to ruin other people's games.

I think in the future we might have a shared player registry for competitive video games, where people link their BrightID, basically proving that they are an individual without disclosing any additional personal information about themselves. And when they are banned for cheating, the ban is applied to their BrightID account, so they can't evade by changing IP/game account/etc. And other games by other companies can choose to look at this registry and reciprocate the ban as well. It seems like an effective, but less dystopic solution than throwing people in jail for in-game cheating.