This is why I've always hated having to do pvp in a pve game for whatever reason (not often these days but mmos still sometimes) I'm bad at pvp and hate being content for other better players! I want to play a game, not be farmed for kills! Guh.

I think that's a rather shallow way of looking at. Would you describe something like chess as 'lazy' then?

A good competitive game has to put a lot of thought and care into its design to make it so that two players trying to make each other miserable actually ends up coming out the other end as a fun experience.

Cheats have been sub based for 20 years.

The difference is not the genre of game, but whether it is played in person or online.

In-person fighting game tournaments are generally free of cheaters, just like in-person FPS and MOBA tournaments. The few who try to cheat in these scenarios are quite obvious, and instantly caught.

Meanwhile, online fighting game tournaments are plagued by lag switches, macros, defensive overlays, frame data mods, etc.

Fighting games have massive cheater problems tho...? Just cause it doesn't happen at the professional level doesn't mean that casual or ranked online play isn't full of filth.

Online chess is also plagued with cheaters. I don't have much else to add to the discussion but I thought I could at least add that.

This is true, online games have always been full of aimbotters and cheaters.

If they seemed less plentiful it's because of the Admin:Player ratios. Back in the day, the game company didn't host the servers they just provided you with a server executable and instructions. So any servers that you played on were paid for by a person or group and that person or group usually moderated them pretty actively.

It wouldn't be unusual to play on a server where 2/3rds of the players had the ability to kickban cheaters. Now, you're lucky if a human admin ever sees a single match that you've played.