Agreed that this type of thing is absurd. First, people who really want to cheat will always find their ways around it. All this type of thing does is make life difficult for persons who are legitimately trying to make their games better.
There is also a tremendous level of hypocrisy as the playing-field is inherently uneven anyway. Ask them if having better hardware and software is ‘cheating’ in their eyes, and then suggest that they demand that all players have exactly the same hardware and software setup on every machine. “What, your rig has a 5% faster CPU? Cheating! Newer GPU? Cheating! Keyboard and Mouse controls? Cheating! Good keyboard vs. bad keyboard? Cheating!”
In the end, I’m convinced these companies don’t really give two-flying-squirrels about actually having an even competition, because that’s nearly impossible. Look at how the racing-sim companies like Polyphony Digital run their ‘become a real racer’ competition. 100% identical hardware and software for every competitor. No, I think most studios just want to cover-their-bums; implement this type of thing and they can say “look, we use xyz Anti-Cheat, so we are doing our best to prevent cheating.”