Niantic developer of Pokemon Go has taken a hard-line stand against cheating in its popular AR app. The company has now pushed out a new counter measure that is going to curve cheating in its game.
In a post on Reddit, a representative from Niantic revealed that, beginning today, Pokemon caught using unofficial means will be denoted with a mark and “may not behave as expected.” “Pokemon caught using third-party services that circumvent normal game play will appear marked with a slash in the inventory.” According to the representative, this new measure is “one small part of our continued commitment to maintaining the integrity of our community.”
This is the latest change that the company has made to curve its cheating and to discourage players from using unofficial third-party apps and services. These services typically map out and are used to find rate Pokemon which the developer does not permit. When apps like this first came out Niantic started soft banning users who were spoofing their GPS location. The game also would “shadowban” users who were flagged using tracker apps. The shadowban would allow players to keep playing but would hide rare spawns from them.
These new changes with bans coincides to new features that have been rolled out to the game including new and improved gyms, the addition of raid battles and potentially legendary pokemon.