They should pivot to a bot detection company with the game as a sort of R&D asset. They have like a decade or two of advantage, but then again, they never were too good at it.
From what I could tell they have zero client-side detection like other, more competitive games. Maybe they wanted to pull out of that cat-and-mouse game? Their solution’s likely very domain-specific.
And bot detection isn’t a field where you can cleanly get a bot/human result. Especially with how bot-like some hardcore players get at the game. If it’s too strict you’ll get false bans, which is a support nightmare. It can’t be easy threading this line
They have the ecosystem to test bot detecting/banning tech, but definitely not the tech. A pivot would require prioritizing bot detection over gaming, which is something that requires both management and players to mature beyond a game.
It was pretty effective with people letting the bots run unattended (and annoying).
Of course that can't work as well now with LLMs.