>>722897009 (OP)
Cheats always existed, all the way back to quake 3 and cs 1.3 you'd have people using OGC Hook and other stuff.
What really sent it into a downward spiral is streaming. Every kid wants to be a streamer because let's be real they aren't going to land a 6 figures job they're dumb retards and since they are also not athletic they can't make it in sports either so what's left is streaming/youtube/influencing for easy money.
For that they need to get them clips where they turn a 1v4 around and the cheat industry has picked up on that.
Custom cheats, cronus zens, spoofers like XIM/Rewasd, AHK scripts, DMA cards, fuck you can go to a walmart and buy a strike pack there.
Then you start investigating and go down the rabbit hole of cheating discords, cheating telegrams, cheating forums... at this point it's over, you've taken the blackpill because you've seen the shit and how all anticheats block fuckall and it makes you think back about this faggot with a TTV in his name who landed 5 headshots in a row including 2 through a wall.
Now why do people defend them when it's obvious they aren't legit? I don't know. Maybe they have zero friends and are in a parasocial relationship. Or maybe because they are also not 100% clean themselves and kinda hope to make it as a streamer one day.
At any rate playing a pvp fps in 2025 is just a bad idea when the cheat industry is raking in billions yearly.