Bots aren't necessarily ruining Splinterlands. I liken it to liquidity providers in the markets. You want to make a trade and you need a counterparty (buyer and a seller), same idea with ranked matches.

Bots are not going to be leaving the game. The toothpaste is out of the tube. The purchase of spellbooks by bot owners are a form of investment, but they do make it difficult to see if the game is actually achieving the growth that everyone involved with the game wants to see.

The bots are not competing in tournaments and they are not in guild brawls. They are playing to grind out as much of the DEC given out for ranked matches and collect loot chests. Disincentivize them and the game becomes far less liquid because player growth has stagnated.

The incentive to play ranked matches as the season goes on dwindles considerably and given the overprinting of the new Rewards cards, renting for power to get more EoS loot chests and rise up the levels easier loses utility. Only fools would be renting for 38 CP/DEC right now. Rent early in the season and hope to hold on to whatever you have by the end. After all, in the last 5 days, you're only playing for brawls (I opted to not brawl during this time because I was afraid I would get a late season rug pull, which happened midway through a tournament for me), tournaments, and daily quests. That's it. Not much motivation.

The whole concept of ranked matches has to be reimagined and 30-50% of the new Rewards cards that have yet to be printed need to be burned off.

The bots are not the problem. The bot owners are just making the most out of the situation and the Splinterlands player experience has conditioned players to the expediency of the bots.