Matchmaking seemed like a neat idea in, like, 2007. In retrospect, it has damaged the industry substantially. All the oxygen has been sucked out of the community server space, etiquette is non-existent, and the aforementioned spyware.
Pretty unfair to paint this as the users choice when the companies are taking our choices away.
If you need to protect competitive play, keep it to actual competitions/make it optional for free play. I'm not giving you unrestricted access to my brokerage account, all of my files, all of my emails/text messages, etc. (which root access on my computer has) so you can prevent cheating in a Sunday night video game.
Of course no security tools work if the game is root.
There are a couple reasons to care about doping in professional sports, that don’t apply here.
First off, these matchmaking games are not real professional competitions. It is more like a pickup game; the stakes are essentially zero. Nobody cares if you dope for your pickup games or your weekend bike rides for friends (other than that that would be a ridiculous thing to do of course).
Second, professional athletes are celebrities. Abusing performance enhancing drugs sets a bad example for the kids watching. Because most people playing matchmaking games aren’t celebrities, they aren’t setting a bad example. And anyway, cheating in videogames has no side effects.
> If you think fairness in videogame competitions is frivolous then do not participate in them.
I mostly don’t. But I can spot wasted engineering effort when I see it, and will continue to call it out.