Every few months a server owner asks us for 'the anti-cheat that stops everything.' It doesn't exist. What does exist is defense in depth — layers that each raise the cost of cheating until it isn't worth it.
Layer 1: Server authority
If the server doesn't trust the client for anything that matters — movement, targeting, resource state — then most cheats simply can't work. This is unglamorous and by far the highest-leverage layer.
Layer 2: Statistical detection
Some things are physically impossible: a player who turns 180 degrees and lands a headshot in 8 milliseconds, or who gathers resources faster than the game allows. Flagging outliers catches a huge share of automation.
Layer 3: Behavioral models
Trained on labeled telemetry, behavioral models catch the subtle cases — the aimbot tuned to look human, the bot with jitter added. They don't ban on their own; they feed a review queue.
The goal isn't to catch every cheater instantly. It's to make cheating expensive, unreliable, and lonely.