(Completely separate from that, consoles shouldn't be treating users as the adversary, but given that they do, games are failing to have a security mindset consistent with that stance.)
I would 100% agree with this when talking about a normal computer, but I kind of feel differently about consoles. How do you prevent cheating in online games if you don't restrict what users can do?
2) Group players by apparent capability and observed behavior, such that cheaters end up only playing with other cheaters.
2. is a research project that will probably never pan out.
This is not a hypothetical or a research project; some games do exactly this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Playe...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Banni...
> Certain games are known to identify cheaters and "shadow ban" them by placing them in matchmaking with other cheaters only, so as not to let the cheaters know that they have been identified.
The banning section mentions companies that employ very invasive software to find and ban cheaters. Read up on how the following softwares actually work:
> There are many facets of cheating in online games which make the creation of a system to stop cheating very difficult; however, game developers and third-party software developers have created or are developing[22][23] technologies that attempt to prevent cheating. Such countermeasures are commonly used in video games, with notable anti-cheat software being BattlEye, GameGuard, PunkBuster, Valve Anti-Cheat (specifically used on games on the Steam platform),[citation needed] and EasyAntiCheat.
Because the only sources you have provided are anecdotal, its entirely possible you are falling for the illusion.
To use your phrases, 'certain games companies' are known to totally lie about their anti cheat techniques and methods to throw people off the scent of the real methods.
Therefore without actually decompiling something to prove whats going on, you have no real idea what techniques are being used at all.
A single cheater can often ruin games for hundreds or even thousands of players very easily. For experienced players, seeing a single flying aimbot shithead in your lobby just means there are 10 other cheaters in the lobby too -- ones using subtle ESP/wallhacks that can be extremely difficult to detect, by design. Shady websites like G2A or GMG that sell keys (which are almost 100% hot keys, to really make it all come full circle) mean that even if you get banned, buying new keys for a new copy of the game is extremely cheap, especially when many of these games have items that can be sold for IRL cash in various ways, games like Rust. For many parts of the world, selling/trading rare items to players can net you plenty of actual income -- and getting banned means nothing as a result. Instant banning cheaters the second they are confirmed leaks information to the cheater and cheat creator, today most games like Warzone or Destiny have to play psyops and shroud their exact detection techniques in part by doing "ban waves" only when they accumulate a mass amount of confirmed cheaters. The cheater that ruined your top score may, necessarily and by design, be allowed to run free for a while.
The net result of all this is that designers and -- importantly, even though people on Hacker News don't want to hear it -- PLAYERS tend to overwhelmingly prefer prevention instead of reaction. They are both needed. Players are not morons who love installing rootkits. But on the whole, preventative measures tend to be more valuable to players and creators than reactionary ones, even if they are all ultimately imperfect.
In a funny twist, games like Tarkov and Rust do have a gameplay mechanic that reduces the long-term psychological devastation of cheaters and is not invasive at all: they reset all content in the game to "neutral" every once in a while, so basically all your stuff gets deleted, and everyone starts over again. (This non-permanence is probably one of the reasons players stick with the game, despite cheaters, which are incredibly infuriating.)
Can I ask if you seriously play any online competitive games, at a high level or otherwise? Because I do, and I'll be honest: I've been hearing it all for 20 years. These types of approaches have had success (CS's player review system, certain shadowban systems, "trip wires" that trigger on impossible game behavior), but there is no single approach that has proven itself to be the ultimate universal solution. There is no universal, wibbly wobbly bullshit stats algorithm you run on your servers to "solve" this. These problems are not solved. I don't like it. I don't run certain games with certain forms of anticheat. But it is what it is.