James Delahunty
25 Feb 2021 13:35
Niantic has targeted more than five million players identified by its anti-cheat system, some of whom have received permanent bans.
The developer has provided details on actions it has taken against players of Pokemon Go, Ingress, and Harry Potter Wizards Unite. In total, more than five million have been targeted since last year, and of them, around 20 percent have been banned permanently for persistent offenses.
"More than 90% of users who received their first warning, stopped cheating afterward. This is quite encouraging for us, as we continue to find the right balance between punishing casual cheaters versus the more egregious ones," the developer wrote on a blog.
"We are committed to ensuring fair gameplay across our game portfolio. Every day newer forms of cheating or spoofing tools are made available on the internet, and we are continuously working to combat these cheaters and focus on improving our detection and enforcement; as they have no place in our games."
Niantic has also reminded players only to download the official versions of its games from Google Play, the Apple App Store, and Samsung Galaxy Store. Furthermore, it stresses that jailbroken and rooted devices are unsupported.
One of the primary means of cheating with Pokemon Go involved GPS location spoofing. By changing the location reported by the device, players were able to stay at home and pretend to have gone to a certain location in order to play.