Moving away from the technical solution space - I'm curious, have their been any games (or communities) with a high entry fee/deposit (e.g. $500 USD) to join kept in escrow and lost in the event you're discovered to be cheating?
There are plenty more questions like paying for mods/review, securing the money, paying for servers, etc.. but my basic question is if cost of entry exceeds cost of reward from cheating has ever been attempted in a game.
Apparently buying a new copy of a $10-20 game isn't enough to keep people away from cheats. Less so when there is prize money on the line or skins (e.g. CS2) worth $100k.
Csgo became free at some point, and I remember the amount of smurfing increasing a lot then. Have rarely noticed cheaters, but smurfs are just as bad if not worse. They do at least require new accounts to waste some time playing deathmatch to be eligible for competitive.
>e.g. $500 USD
I've seen private cheats for games with less-than-terrible anticheats charge that monthly, if not weekly. You're underestimating how much people are willing to pay to play with cheats, and overestimating how much regular people are willing to pay to play against players without them.