This was the norm. It just changed in the last few years (say, 10). And it could be the norm again. I still play games with zero cheaters because I return to the same server every night, playing against 63 other players where I usually have seen most of them before. And there is usually an admin there, or someone who can ping one if needed.

I have no idea why this changed in more recent games. While every other online thing moved to have users create content abd self-moderate, games for some reason moved the other direction.

When you go back this was the norm. You go to irc, search in #5on5: high server on (counter-strike 1.6)

You either have a server and they come to you or you don't and message people. If they/you feel like are hacking go next. There were tons of servers where you had admins all the time.

Human admins still can only see the obvious spin/aimbots.

Companies took this from us as hosting your own servers is rarely an option these days and you rely on the company never shutting them down.

It's not that long ago this was the norm.