Community-run and moderated servers easily fixed this issue decades ago. Maybe video games should be fun centers of community again instead of maximally isolating and atomizing skinner boxes designed to make children addicted to endlessly practicing and competing at worthless skills so the sunk cost keeps them buying loot boxes

Well, the problem is eventual consistency and these games have a hell to consolidate properly.

One user is on a connection with 10ms latency, the other user is on 50 ms latency. Now, if first user does something, and second user can either do something to evade or can do something that actually prevents the first user from acting, how do you consolidate that?

The actual timestamp of when exactly what happened helps immensely, but you have to trust the timestamp. And how can you know that is not manipulated?

But... that's just the surface. Consider: one client uses a rendering that takes 25ms longer to show up and another client does not render textures/shadows etc. That client is faster and the sender can even send "official" response times, but would still give an advantage.

So, I am not sure this can be solved serverside. But... I don't play these games anymore and would never opt for a rootkit to be installed just so I can play. I can imagine plenty of people, though, who would.

> (I’d still lean towards expecting game houses to find another way, kernel drivers are still client side trust mechanisms).

Well, this problem simply can't be solved server-side only. Client-side can't be validated without rootkit (and even then it's not enough, but enough to deter majority of cheaters).

If not having hackes is critical for a competitive videogame CS and Dota 2 will be dead.

I think the point is that competitive multiplayer games are not critical. Scripting in e.g. league of legends probably doesn't register on 99% of humanities "top 100 most critical things in my life" radar.