People play multiplayer games to have fun and interact with others. If you behave badly, be it cheating or otherwise, you should be banned from using the multiplayer service because your behavior impacts other people.
What if you behaved great but some guy fresh out of code boot camp's algorithm bans you?
"I'm locked out of my account because of a buggy algorithm and there is no recourse" is a recurring thing here.
Be a nuisance to society -> get fucked. That's a pretty universal principle
For "get fucked" measures you need pretty low rate of false convictions
But also, cheaters suck, and whoever's running the server should be allowed to kick you out.
And it's just a game that's not playable anymore, not the whole Steam account, isn't it?
Some random commercial third party can make an accusation and damage the value of thousands of games on a lark.
Meanwhile, any determined cheater just bought another copy of the game on an account dedicated solely to that task. This person suffers no extended consequence.
Other players paid too.
Personally, I opted out of these games, F2P already perverts most game design away from fun IMO. And despite all this crap it seems like people are complaining about cheaters more than ever, but maybe I'm just old now!
- Play a limited demo of a full game.
- Buy a full offline game for your console or PC.
- Play a F2P MMORPG (no anti-cheat software to speak of).
- Pay for an MMORPG subscription (also no anti-cheat software to speak of).
Cheats were less developed and so were anti-cheats. The F2P model was not as wide-spread either. The mobile app market didn't exist.
This is not the reality we live in anymore.
I've decided to not waste as much time as I used to on this stuff, because as I got older I learned more about how valuable time actually is.
Wow, I live in a first world country and that would still ban like half the adults I know (Mostly because our bill pay phone plans are terrible value), along with basically every teenager (which for COD, you would think is the core target market).