Niantic continue war on Pokemon Go cheaters with new anti-cheat plans

Pokemon Go developers Niantic have revealed their plans to combat cheaters in the mobile game, as players continue to communicate their frustrations about players manipulating the game for their advantage.

Pokemon Go’s struggles with cheaters are proof that any and all games are vulnerable to players trying to unfairly exploit them.

While the game exploded in popularity way back in 2017, it has taken a few years for cheaters to properly get a foothold in Niantic’s title. In particular, ‘spoofing’ has become a major issue; seeing players fool Niantic’s GPS tracking.

As a result, it is possible for them to ‘reach’ areas far from their location and find new Pokemon and gyms to interact with, despite the game being almost entirely based around real-life location.

However, Niantic have had issues in the past with banning players incorrectly, caught in the crossfire as the devs try and crack down on genuine cheaters.

Now, in June 2022, they have released a lengthy update reaffirming their commitment to fair play and keeping Pokemon Go as cheat-free as is possible.

• Read More: Pokemon Go fans praise Niantic over account deletion process

The statement thanks fans for their patience, before saying: “We’ve invested in becoming better at observing cheating behaviors, and can now more reliably pinpoint these activities with higher speed and accuracy, preventing legitimate players from being punished incorrectly.

“As a result, we will be ramping up enforcement against these behaviors across our games, and rolling out our improved approach to anti-cheat. We are starting now by taking action against a number of accounts who we found to be in violation of our terms of service or player guidelines during recent in-game events in Pokémon GO.”

It continued by outlining their strategy moving forwards, saying that they will “continue to improve” all measures to combat cheaters “to ensure we’re staying ahead of any new behaviors that allow players to unfairly exploit game rules.”

While cheating will never be eradicated completely, fans will doubtless be reassured by Niantic’s action and strong rhetoric.