When VAC was originally introduced, CPUs only had 32bit architecture, not that 64bit hindered anything; but you could inject cheats in a near infinite amount of way, or have cheats read from memory directly, or have cheats do things especially through video drivers. Hell, glitching your nvidia drivers and setting things like Negative LOD Bias would allow you to see through textures in some cases (wall hacks)
It's been a cat and mouse game since the dawn of gaming and e-sports.
Fun fact: CS 1.6 competetive had what was called "Organner" when teams switched over from CAL to CEVO (first paid e-sports online league) and as well as ESEA which is acclaimed for its anti-cheats; the pro players you see/saw such as n0thing, summit-1g (not saying he did cheat, he wasn't pro in CS1.6, 1g was a pug team that meant 1st generation and a lot of us were in it) -- but everybody in the pro scene around that did cheat, or had cheaters on their team.
n0thing was banned from CAL rigorously for cheating in CAL-Premier and rejoined with complexity after ringing for other teams in CS1.6 matches (ban evading). he's admitted to cheating in CS 1.6, and found fame with Counter-Strike 1.6'd Evil Geniuses organization which encompanied the old compLexity roster.
These dickheads went on to make fortunes; not to say that they weren't good in their own respects, but people such as n0thing openly admit, and will admit if you ask them on the stream if they cheated in 1.6 to get to where they're at.
You could inject cheat codes through your mouse drivers at LANs and if you set a low FOV aimbot, it was undetectable: IE triggers when you aim at their chest, aims up to hit the head; and had advanced net code modifiers to land bullets in places you weren't aiming all together.
Knowing this, completely ruined the pro scene and wanting to watch these matches and personalities all together. To know how many legitimate players out there were passionate about these games, looking to go pro, and really enjoy competing at the highest levels couldn't because the skill gap was so significant, and then even more so because pro players had undetectable cheats.
Still to this day it is virtually impossible to detect hacks, however games such as DotA2 make it signifcantly harder to cheat by only sending frames/updates when it should; rather than old games sending all player data. I believe Valorant has a decent system but all in all; I helped run the leagues and the level and problem at which cheating was occurring, was known about, and not being able to prove what you know, would make you SICK if you ever enjoyed competing in e-sports.
Yet another reason why fighting games are the superior competitive scene. The only "cheat" you could realistically see at an offline event is macros, and the chances of a macro increasing your win rate are slim to none. And there are so, so many good offline events. Online there are more potential ways to cheat, but nobody really cares. Just blacklist the player and move on.
You can inject cheats directly in to the Xbox's back then directly through the fight sticks
You'd know though if somebody was cheating so not sure how crazy the SF scene had cheats but check out tool assisted; when I originally saw it I just put my head down
You cannot tell me fgs are "too complex" and then mention DOTA in the same breath.
I personally prefer watching a game that doesn't have downtime. Watching teams buy items and walk around is not interesting. So, so much downtime in all these big team games.
It's been a cat and mouse game since the dawn of gaming and e-sports.
Fun fact: CS 1.6 competetive had what was called "Organner" when teams switched over from CAL to CEVO (first paid e-sports online league) and as well as ESEA which is acclaimed for its anti-cheats; the pro players you see/saw such as n0thing, summit-1g (not saying he did cheat, he wasn't pro in CS1.6, 1g was a pug team that meant 1st generation and a lot of us were in it) -- but everybody in the pro scene around that did cheat, or had cheaters on their team.
n0thing was banned from CAL rigorously for cheating in CAL-Premier and rejoined with complexity after ringing for other teams in CS1.6 matches (ban evading). he's admitted to cheating in CS 1.6, and found fame with Counter-Strike 1.6'd Evil Geniuses organization which encompanied the old compLexity roster.
These dickheads went on to make fortunes; not to say that they weren't good in their own respects, but people such as n0thing openly admit, and will admit if you ask them on the stream if they cheated in 1.6 to get to where they're at.
You could inject cheat codes through your mouse drivers at LANs and if you set a low FOV aimbot, it was undetectable: IE triggers when you aim at their chest, aims up to hit the head; and had advanced net code modifiers to land bullets in places you weren't aiming all together.
Knowing this, completely ruined the pro scene and wanting to watch these matches and personalities all together. To know how many legitimate players out there were passionate about these games, looking to go pro, and really enjoy competing at the highest levels couldn't because the skill gap was so significant, and then even more so because pro players had undetectable cheats.
Still to this day it is virtually impossible to detect hacks, however games such as DotA2 make it signifcantly harder to cheat by only sending frames/updates when it should; rather than old games sending all player data. I believe Valorant has a decent system but all in all; I helped run the leagues and the level and problem at which cheating was occurring, was known about, and not being able to prove what you know, would make you SICK if you ever enjoyed competing in e-sports.