It’s definitely not infallible but neither is anticheat software. How do you tell if someone is using a DMA cheat? Even kernel level anticheat can’t detect that.

Is any anticheat as effective as a community server with active moderators to ban cheaters?

Because they actively encouraged users to prepurchase the game, play the beta, and refund if they didn’t like it. Many prepurchased based on previous comments about supporting proton and are now considering refunding based on recent comments.

In the beta last week the game was perfectly playable via proton which is why people are frustrated.

Pretty annoying if true. I preordered with the idea that I could refund if the beta didn’t work. It worked great so I was happy to wait for release but now it looks like I’ll have to refund after all.

Worked fine with linux in the last beta. Why disable it now?

I think you’re jumping the gun a bit. They’re just saying that requiring a phone number added a barrier against spammers and they want to be sure this change doesn’t open the flood gates.

From the article:

"We gotta figure out some way to induce a cost for signing up without a phone number”, Kret said.

It’s unclear whether this means that registration without a phone number will become a paid feature.

However, “cost” does not necessarily mean a monetary fee; it could also refer to another barrier designed to prevent abuse.