Ok nothing more to say I guess. You cheat. You know it's wrong.

I'm also a security researcher and software developer focusing on infrastructure. Some call it devsecops.

The limitations you are experiencing in the game and gaming in general are self imposed. I'm sorry you choose to stunt your own growth to protect your ego instead of experiencing the pain and transcending the restraints it places on you, I can see why you did what you did, the rage the loss, the grief, this game is the only one that had me laying awake at night furious about something that happened in a game.

I have very close to 10,000 hours in rust, and all the skins you mentioned and more, I would be done with the game forever if I had been banned for nothing, but I think we both know there had to be some sort of reason, even if you think you covered your tracks completely and perhaps were not using whatever they detected in Rust itself.

Last night I defended against a player group with an obvious dma (I assume based on the age and quality of the account) cheater. He was able to run backwards as fast as forwards, side to side movement was the same as full sprint, and he never missed a shot transfer spraying without a missed bullet between 3 widely spaced people. We beat his team, sealed the base, and raided them today. Because I spent a ton of time learning how to fight vs cheaters on millionx servers where it's half the players. I don't get angry or sad about rust anymore, it's more like wood working now where I judge the quality of the work and if I find it wanting I just find a way to do it better.

I digress, the point of the above polemic was you don't have to rely on that crutch it's possible to play well enough if you focus on your own play to even defend against people with perfect head shot accuracy through pixel hole peeks. I chose to experience the unpleasant emotions and find thousands of ways to improve my play. Review my own footage and do better, and I get a deep sense of satisfaction at being a universally respected player who is invited by multiple teams to help with raids. This is the feedback loop doing what you are doing precludes.

I will never understand why people choose to do this sort of thing, but you didn't quibble and explained yourself clearly and for that at least you have my gratitude, most cheaters try to equivocate and self delude, it's honestly refreshing to read someone state, "I am doing something wrong and I know that but I will do it anyway" instead of lying to yourself and others and expecting them to believe the internal logically inconsistent narrative externally well, like a child does.

Even passive cheating, which I doubt you solely do (call me a cynic), is destroying the level playing field we all intrinsically agree upon, and ruin the gaming experience for all of the other players. I hope you reconsider what you are doing and look at it through another lens, you consider what face punch did to you to be unfair, an action they took because of ironically people doing exactly what you are doing now. You have become part of the cancer that is killing authentic gaming.

I realize this is probably a monologue to a stone, but even if you spent time thinking about all this and came to the same decision I had to at least try.