

What you’re referring to is deterrence, and it doesn’t apply to online gaming the way it does to theft of property. One cheater doesn’t ruin the game for one other person, they ruin the game for dozens or hundreds of other players.
Why are you comparing theft to game hacking out of nowhere? Did you accidentally reply to the wrong person?
And the efficacy being so bad…
Source?
full access to the system itself.
What do you mean by system in “full access to the system”? Too vague to even say anything about.
And the guys writing the cheat software just have to put in the effort once to defeat the anti-cheat and then they sell it to people who install it like any other software. The cheaters who use the cheats have it easy.
The potential guys that can write the cheat software and how quickly it can be developed is the part that matters. Much like when it’s easy to use an exploit once it’s already discovered. Someone still has to discover the exploit.
Would like to see some evidence supporting that beggars get an average close to $40 an hour. Searched for papers about the topic and haven’t found anything being remotely close to what you suggest.