alt Hacker NewsExcept in the case of video games it in practice means that cheaters get to terrorize your playerbase without being banned. This tactic is the kind of decision that is made by people staring at metrics all day without considering what's going on in reality.
It's pretty effective actually, this is why they do ban waves.
One of my friends in high school used to cheat on a popular video game. The fact ban waves would occur about once a week to once a month meant whenever his accounts got banned, he never knew why exactly and wasn't able to stop it the next time.
Of course, if ban waves are too long apart then yeah you're just letting a known cheater wreak havoc on the playerbase.