I wouldn't say that it has been abandoned, we've had after launch support since 6+ years now. At april 8th COH1 will be ported to steamworks as well, so its hardly "no support". There has also been a lot of action behind the scenes until the focus shifted to coh2. ...
The problem with COH1 and cheating was just that it was un on a separate platform where it is hard to punish someone. Especially when you can get a new key for 2$.
With Coh2 on steam the level of potential punishment is much bigger. You can not only get your game account banned, but your steam acount, which possibly is bound to a lot more than just COH2. It will not be as easy to just get a new version of the game.
