[raydev]

No. The same way piracy has been diminished in the mainstream by years of lawsuits and jailtime against the loudest most available sources, the strongest anti-cheats have suppressed the easiest and cheapest paths to cheating on AAA games. Piracy hasn't gone away, but the number of people doing it peaked last decade.

Anti-cheat makers doesn't need to eliminate cheating completely, they just need to capture enough cheating (and ban unpredictably) that average people are mostly discouraged. As long as cheat-creators have to scurry around in secrecy and guard their implementations until the implementation is caught, the "good" cheats will never be a commodity on mainstream well-funded games with good anti-cheat.

Cheat-creators have to do the hard hacking and put their livelihoods on the line, they make kids pay up for that.

[reactordev]

Piracy didn’t go anywhere, it got corporate sponsorship.

Having some anti-cheat is better than no anti-cheat but my point is it’s not a shield. It’s a cheese grater.