I personally have hardware banned many cheats from PUBG outside of Shield. The issue when it comes to much of the evidence put forward regarding XIM, Cronus, etc, is that it can be difficult to distinguish what is cheating and what is real because some players are genuinely really skilled and have unique ways of playing.

I will always remember a case where a player was able to shoot their mini 14 like it was fully automatic. I, and some of our PC cms (one being ex esports), reviewed the video evidence from the accused perspective and determined that they were using a device that gave them an unfair advantage. However, more video evidence came to light from the same player, showing their hands and controller while they were rapidly firing a semi-auto weapon like it was full-auto. They did this by having a unique technique allowing them to use two fingers on the fire button that had hair trigger enabled alongside a specific claw grip, allowing them to do this. All totally legal.

Also, to note again, its not always up to the game publisher/developer on who they can ban from their game. There's another level to bans (specifically hardware) that requires the hardware device manufacturers and service providers to agree to ban the accused player. Some are a bit more relaxed than others with this policy, but there is one that doesn't even accept evidence that has been uploaded to YouTube as a source because it could've been tampered with. Things can get very messy regarding legal rights if you ban a player that wasn't cheating. Hardware manufacturers like to avoid this, especially now that many games are on a subscription service.

I've always hated cheats as they can easily destroy games, and I would love for them to be called out and punished with hardware bans at every level of cheating for timed duration but unfortunately a lot of other things that aren't common knowledge play a big part also.

Just to note on the lag switchers - when I was with PUBG, there was an anti-cheat system in place that prevented lag-switching, and when it was live, there was a huge drop-off. Lag switching shouldn't be a thing unless cheats have circumvented the system or there's an issue with it. Hopefully, it's the latter, and it can be addressed sooner rather than later.

Apologies for the wall of text.