[billyoyo]

That's just elitist though isn't it? These games are enjoyed by players from all over the world, including massive numbers of players in countries with far less average disposable income. Its common in many countries to go to an internet cafe to play these games as they don't own their own hardware even.

It would also massively reduce the number of players. Competitive multiplayer games rely on large active playerbases for fast and fair matchmaking. That's why free to play has become the dominant model for these games. If you have to pay $1000 to play one of these games, they have no chance vs. the competition.

Obviously you can't completely solve this problem, but you can minimize it as much as possible.

Also these sorts of "trusted clubs" do exist for certain games (e.g. FaceIt for CounterStrike) but ultimately it still just relies on anti-cheat to establish that trust.

[umvi]

Money is just one way of establishing "trust clubs". Time is another. For free-to-play games, you could make it so that users are peered with other users who have put in the same amount of time into the system. So if you've gone a whole year without being flagged for cheating in the system, you'll be paired up with other users who have also gone years without being flagged.

If you create a new account, you'll be peered with other new accounts (low trust). Still possible to cheat, but the cost is very high (years of effort to get accepted in the best trust clubs)