Bringing some data in, riot games itself was reporting that cheating was not that much of a problem really: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-anti-cheat-in-lol-more/

According to the plot we see there, a very very very minor percentage of games was affected by cheaters in 2020, and I honestly doubt the situation has changed. So, until we see new data from riot, I’m calling bullshit on this whole vanguard thing

I think the main issue here (I haven’t seen it mentioned in the top comments) is that LoL doesn’t even have a cheating problem honestly. I’ve been playing since 2014, off and on, and I think I might have met maybe one scripter (I’m not really sure). Lol has definitely a toxicity problem, but I honestly don’t think it has ever had a scripters/cheaters problem, so I really don’t understand this. Is it because of bot accounts? Whose games are these bots ruining (never seen them between gold-diamond)? Does it justify a kernel level anti cheat? Honestly, the real problem with this is not the kernel level anti cheat (because I guess that might be useful for games like valorant), it’s the fact that this was never really even close to be necessary

Edit: interestingly enough, riot games itself was reporting in 2020 that cheaters and scripters were ruining a very minor fraction of the games. Ref: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-anti-cheat-in-lol-more/

Way too suspiciously specific

Very interesting question. As an Italian (specifying this because it probably changes what and when things happened), I remember this transition started to happen in 2010 mainly because of Facebook.

It’s difficult to say why we decided to go with real names on that platform when there were already other similar ones (netlog was super popular here), where most people were mostly semi-anonimous (real pictures, fake names). I totally agree with another comment which said we started to realize internet was not that dangerous or bad, which probably made this happen, combined with the fact that Facebook explicitly asks for your real name.
Back then, I feel there was also much less attention to privacy on the internet (or maybe it’s just because I was a teenager), and it felt super exciting to engage with every new platform or website.