Freemium saves you none in cheaters.
It costs you to buy Overwatch and cheating has always been at least as rampant there, certainly no less.
It is the popularity of the game, and the ease of the cheating versus the anti-cheat practices of the company. Fortnite is freemium and has far less cheating than Overwatch or Apex because Epic is both making far more money and also they are far more vigilant.
Apex has a problem in that their anti-cheat isn't up to snuff. They make plenty of cash too from their game, far as I can tell, more than they would selling it for $40 because people don't really know how to control their purses. It's a matter of their anti-cheat practices not being as high a priority, or they aren't as good at it.
