The sad reality is that people simply do not give a damn/are so weak willed that they will buy the game regardless. I wish it weren't the case, but unfortunately it is.

I'd rather play without cheaters than care about running a kernel-level anticheat.

I personally don't mind having it installed, just because it makes a huge difference.

I remember playing CS:GO (and later, CS2) and it was super common to see cheaters in almost every other match.

In contrast, I haven't seen a single cheater yet in a match of Valorant.

You can see the difference yourself by checking the UnknownCheats forums for CS2 vs Valorant: the CS2 subforum is full of new hacks every day (most of which seem to be slight modifications of existing ones) while the Valorant one is completely dead.