So you’ve all probably heard of that game that Nintendo and Niantic, Inc. released called Pokemon GO, because yeah, it’s a bit popular these days. Another thing that’s popular – trying to get ahead of the competition by cheating or hacking the game. Well, we’ve just discovered what happens to those people who cheat at Pokemon GO (lowlifes, all of them) – and we’re asking for heavier penalties.
There are a number of reasons why people would want to spoof the Pokemon GO app. The major reason is that the app is not live in a lot of territories, so some people resort to GPS hacks to make the app work. This – installing an illegal APK – is actually pretty dangerous. The second reason? Some people want to spoof their phone’s GPS so they can “go” to population centers because there are more Pokemon to catch in the cities.
Niantic is not sympathetic to any of these, but the bans they give out are pretty light. The bans people have experienced include no longer being able to catch Pokemon, being unable to collect items from PokeStops and not being able to battle or claim a gym. But these bans only last for a few hours or so, making the cheating something of a calculated risk.
If Pokemon GO were to move forward from this, we’ll be the first to ask for stricter bans so the life lessons can be taught, you know. We hope that Niantic is listening and that bans will progressively be stricter as the updates to the game are rolled out.
VIA: Polygon
Are there any sources of these bans?
At the same time Niantic also needs to make the game more fair and balanced. It’s great that you have to go out and about to find Pokemon and that they’re not all in one place, but it’s not great that population centres have a far greater variety and number of them. It gives people who live and work in places like New York or London a massive advantage.