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I find that number optimistic. They’re still trusting a client that’s in malicious hands, and no anti-cheat will ameliorate that flaw.

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You have succinctly described the #1 hard problem in multiplayer games. There is no solution, only things you can do to do better. A good recent example was Fall Guys being basically unplayable due to cheaters and had to up their game with an anti-cheat engine to make it playable again.

The issue is that because there is no perfect solution even if you have a pretty good all server side solution you’ll still improve by adding client side anti-cheat.

Anti-cheat systems are the compromise that allow games to be played on PCs instead of only locked down dedicated hardware.

I can't help but feel like Fall Guys was not the ideal example given just how comically vulnerable it was, it trusted the client for so much instead of running calculations server side you could just tell the server you're at the finish line and disqualify everyone else.

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