Tbh not sure i agree. Started a lore-playing server with friends in 2012. It grew to over 200 unique players and rich DnD style growing history. Minecraft entered its dark period after the purchase but in the last few years has given players plenty of steady updates that are bringing us back and keeping our lore playing server thriving.

Ive seen more innovations in Minecraft in 5 years than I’ve seen in pokemon in 20, to put it into perspective. Love both series.

Great points. Fortunately unreal engine comes out of box with server prediction and validation of location. What is harder are edge case resource padding that are harder to detect. (Given our game is RTS people giving themselves a small, barely noticeable cheat is still a cheat). But yes there are lots of techniques to minimize most of it.

Indie game dev here with an upcoming arena /action rts. I fully agree with those companies employing toxic approaches, but cheating is legit. Even our very raw, very underdeveloped playtest had some players playing around with cheating, by adjusting client data. We had to reprioritize basic validation checks but they aren’t perfect. Im wondering if any devs has good tips/philosophies for balacinging discouraging cheating (as it ruins the experience for others) versus not pissing legitimate players off.