I would like to ask you to present some proof for those numbers. There's also tons of legitimate players that can't play at all since the anti-cheat system thinks their install is not good. At which point is it okay for anti-cheat developers to tell customers to get a new PC (with their approved hardware and drivers) and install nothing but clean copy of windows and their game on it?

Consider game like Dark Souls 3, it has very simple anti-cheat system and trusts the client completely. Yet you rarely see actually cheaters online, this is purely a social problem.

You can search any rootkit based anti-cheat software and find just how many people have issues with them. Just some examples from the infamous riot vanguard which developers boast it being "user-friendly" rootkit.

* https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/gead0n/riot_vangu...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/geqc73/have_you_d...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/gbebt0/if_riot_is...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g5aem3/vanguard_a...

Here is 200k bans in one game: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/over-200000-modern-...

Anyway, it seems to me that most of those people just need to update their fan control programs. One example I saw was CPU-z which had a CVE in their driver a few years ago. They are using drivewrs with known vulnerabilities. You also need to consider that some cheaters will also spread mis-information.

"Anti-cheat" making their AIOs or fans stop seems more like virus like behavior instead of telling the user maybe they should update or buy different hardware (which even then is shitty behavior just for some damn game).