What is Kernel Level Anti-Cheat actually protecting in games?

I recently read a blog post entitled Kernel Level Anti-Cheat is an Overreach. This blog post is a solid technical dive into the underpinnings of what kinds of personal data privacy too many gamers willingly sacrifice for an experience that is essentially substandard - one that catches too many innocent folks in dragnet-style surveillance and doesn’t protect gamers effectively enough. It got me thinking a little more though about why game cheating has become so prevalent.

Thinking back to 2005, when my friends and I had opened a LAN gaming center, I remember hearing the yells of frustration from folks that ended up dropping into a Call of Duty match with an aim bot, or hearing cries of “wall hacks”. Cheating in multiplayer games has been around, I’m sure, since folks could figure out how to do it. However, the people using these cheats ranged from jerks that simply wanted to ruin another person’s good time, to folks simply seeing if they could. While I’m a staunch advocate that there is no wrong way to play a game, so long as you’re not harming another player’s experience, it was my observation that cheating, while frustrating, did not systemically harm the player experience. That is, until like most things, it became lucrative to do so.

Sure, I’m aware that some hack creators were peddling their wares for paltry amounts of PayPal dollarydoos, but that’s not lucrative. There’s only so many folks that want to be jerks in games. What there is money in is grinding for in-game rewards that can be converted to real world currency. Grey/black market sales of in-game gold and rare item drops, like the cheats themselves, could be considered a problem, but their seedy nature kept their scope limited. The introduction of sanctioned marketplaces, whether it be loot boxes for purchase, or the ability to buy, sell and trade in-game items with real world currency, is where the opportunity to make money skyrocketed.

In the gold rush of digital gacahpon and skins, the cheat makers and anti-cheat makers are both in the business of selling shovels. The arms race is great for them, because they both get to make money. If the buying, selling, and trading of these items, whether directly or indirectly through loot boxes, is sanctioned, then the game makers get in on the money making fun too, all the while claiming that anti-cheat is there to protect the player experience. Which I’m sure it was, in its original inception. It doesn’t seem that way to me anymore, or at least, it doesn’t seem like the prime factor anymore.