> The reasonable, fair, common-sense pro-consumer thing to do is to split the online play in two: a non-anticheat server and an anti-cheat server. Players can opt-in to installing a rootkit/sharing their SSN/whatever if they want to play on the hardened server. This costs nothing, and makes all types of gamers happy.

This is a very good point! And I'd like to point out that there is an analogue to the problem of smurfing in online video games, and the corresponding solution, which is to require semi-unique ID to play (e.g. a phone number which can only be tied to one account at a time with a cool-off period when transferring between accounts). Valve does this for Dota 2, and smurfing is far, far less common than it is in League of Legends.

Some League players complain that they don't want to give their phone number to Riot (which is entirely reasonable given that it's a subsidiary of Tencent), but if enough people don't want that, then Riot could simply split the ranked queue into two: one where (soft, ie phone #) identity verification is required, and one where it isn't.

Riot won't do this, though, not because it wouldn't fix the problem (it would, as demonstrated by Valve), but because they profit from smurf accounts buying skins.