'Pokémon GO' Cheats: Niantic Softbanning Spoofers and Cheaters
Niantic Labs appears to be testing the waters with the feature that it has been working that aims to combat and eventually eliminate spoofing and cheating in "Pokémon GO" for good.
Last month, Niantic announced that they were working on a functionality that will do away with spoofing, wherein cheaters trick the game into registering they are in another location when they are just at home in order to capture rare Pokémon from around the world.
Over the weekend, Niantic launched the first phase of its efforts to stop these cheaters. Those who were using the technique in the past couple of days on "Pokémon GO" find themselves "soft banned" or temporarily unable to play.
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The Silph Road Reddit has provided a screenshot of the explanation made by a Discord channel tracker app developer about Niantic's soft banning, confirming that sniping has been "officially disabled."
What "Pokémon GO" cheaters do to catch a rare Pokémon is teleport to its GPS coordinates with the use of dubious software, start an encounter and then transport to the home location during battle.
This will then allow them to catch the Pokémon. Unfortunately for them, these days will soon days be over. "Snipers now get soft banned instantly, so it's safe to assume their accounts are getting flagged. It's a good move against botters without hitting maps," the dev explained.
While the change may not be all that drastic, it is deemed a good first move from Niantic. The studio appears to be taking the "Pokémon GO" spoofing and sniping issue step by step.
Niantic is yet to make this change official yet, but it is expected to be announced soon. The abovementioned tracker developer hopes that a permanent change is on the way.
Niantic really is serious in cleaning "Pokémon GO" from cheaters. Not too long ago, the studio shut down two of the biggest and most popular third-party trackers that aid in the spoofing.
