Microsoft has long wanted to get vendors out of the kernel. It’s a huge privacy/security/stability risk, and causes major issues like the Crowdstrike outage.
Most of those issues also apply to kernel anti-cheat as well, and it’s likely that Microsoft will also attempt to move anti-cheat vendors out of kernel space. The biggest gaming issues with steamOS/Linux are kernel anti-cheat not working, so this could be huge for having full compatibility of multiplayer games on Linux.
Depends on the game, really, but “relying” on anti-cheat is pretty common. Larger games tend to have teams who review cases that get flagged by the systems and players and do manual removal but these teams also tend to be quite small and unable to adequately handle the amount of cheating that occurs.
If gamers want to see cheaters less often, they need to pressure the companies to do human moderation in addition.