I wouldn't measure anticheat success by esports earning

It's clearly one significant measure. What do you think is going to happen to tournament money if every other tournament has a cheater? How many esports fans want to go play League after watching Faker decimate another team if they have cheaters in their match every other day?

What it tells you most of all is popularity and incentive to cheat. Cast a big enough net and you'll inevitably find cheaters. The bigger the net, the more cheaters you'll collect.

Studios could release the server files when the game is EOL…

My point is that player-moderation scales, while corporate moderation does not. The fact that there are more players on corporate moderated servers only makes this reality more significant.

The reality of what exists today shows that the opposite is true.

Pulling out a few games with less than 5000 players globally isn't remotely comparable to having hundreds of thousands of players daily.

It's amplified even more for games that have a global ranking system and a professional competitive scene.