The issue with that is, it's a game that never ends. Now you need to inflate your npm/brew/dnf installs, then your website traffic to not make it to obvious, etc.

I am not successful at all with my current projects (admittedly am not trying to be nowadays), so feel free to dismiss this advice that predates a time before LLM driven development, but in the past, I have had decent success in forums interacting with those with a specific problem my project did address. Less in stars, more in actual exchange of helpful contributions.

An open source project really shouldn't be something you need to "get off the ground." If it provides value then people will naturally use it.

Honest question, which companies handle the process better given it is a trade-off? Yes, VAC is not as iron-clad as kernel level solutions can be, but the latter is overly invasive for many users. I'd argue neither is the objectively right or better approach here and Valves approach of longer term data collection and working on ML solutions that have the potential to catch even those cheating methods currently able to bypass kernel level anti-cheat is a good step.

On Github stars, I'd argue they are the most suitable comparison, as all the funny business regarding stars should be, if at all, detectable by Github directly and ideally, bans would have the biggest deterrent effect, if they happened in larger waves, allowing the community to see who did engage in fraudulent behaviour.