I think a lot of the prevalence of cheating has to have some economic roots. A certain kind of cheater, the kind who buy new accounts (maybe with new cosmetics) every time they are banned, isn't necessarily someone a company wants to get rid of permanently.

The benefits of this sort of income may be high compared to the benefit of being a "serious competitive game".

I think Minecraft servers are instructive, because they're often run just as cynically as free to play games, but with less competence, so it's easier to see what's going on. You do see a lot of pay-to-unban there, for instance.