True VAC alone is not great, but CS2 (in my opinion) has one of the best systems against abuse, even though legit players like myself can get stuck in low trust factor sometimes.

VAC, trust factor, overwatch (player report reviewing, not sure if this was discontinued) all work together.

Hopefully a big improvement is to come soon with the VAC Live agents that monitor games using AI to predict likely cheaters.

Valve obviously has a big interest in keeping cheaters out, because their skin economy makes them boatloads (literally hehe) of money. I think they are the only company going down this road right now of AI agents, which is unobtrusive to users and should hopefully keep up VACs high accurate ban rate (which is at least a good thing about VAC, when you are banned, in almost all cases, you were indeed cheating (low fase positives)).

I do recognize though that AI agents likely comes with a high cost and may only be implemented in other highly competitive games that make lots of money.

There probably exist other methods, but it’ll take more investment in designing adaptable systems that can work on many games.