We’ve observed a rising number of reports on reddit and Facebook that Niantic is finally cracking down on Pokemon GO bots. This move comes as no surprise, as players have been complaining about GPS spoofers and botters for weeks. Niantic has been fairly idle on the subject for weeks, so seeing some abusive players getting bans is good news for everyone who plays the game fairly.
A Pokemon GO player from Brazil tweeted 12 hours ago to John Hanke, Niantic CEO, with a report that there are incredibly strong high level Pokemon trainers in Brazil, even though the game launched officially just hours before.
@feionda that’s coming.
— John Hanke (@johnhanke) August 5, 2016
As Hanke replies, bans are coming and we’re not shedding any tears over it. We’ve received multiple e-mails from Australian players claiming that bots are ruining the normal game play. Aussies, rejoice, justice will be served.
Pokemon GO Bots are being blocked
A reddit user (/u/bottomset) reported a screenshot that allegedly shows an in game ban screen, but as comments on the post explain it is indeed fake. Although Niantic is working on fixing the bot problem, a large scale anti bot measure is yet to be implemented.
Another reddit user reported that certain Pokemon GO bots have been blocked completely by recent changes to the tracking system. Here’s what /u/Derto_ wrote:
Hello, travelers! Not too long ago Niantic have changed tracking system. Well, I was thinking how bots are going to work now? I have downloaded some bots to test them out if they acrually got banned. I chose 3 different bots. Bot #1 said that it didn’t find any pokestops near me, however I chose Santa Monica as a location. Bot #2 said the same thing as Bot #1. Bot #3 just started restarting every second because it couldn’t find any pokemon near. Weird, huh? I have tested this with my friend’s computer and he has the same thing happening. I guess, bots do not work anymore. Does this mean tha
t bots have been banned, or will they work as soon as they will make an update? Hopefully not.
PS: This might be just me, so don’t hate me if I’m wrong. 🙂
The Silph Road subbredit has even are more reports on bots getting blocked and abusive players getting banned, so if you’re interested in this topic feel free to explore there.
We might be just on the end of the Golden Age for Pokemon GO bots. Finally.
John Hanke explains PokeVision Shutdown
Yesterday we’ve seen another surprise from Niantic. Hanke published a blog post named Update on Maintaining and Running the Pokémon GO Service on the official Pokemon GO blog. Hanke went on to explain the reasoning behind the shutdown of all third party trackers and map scanners. As explained, the trackers were generating too much load on their infrastructure and were a major cause of Latin America launch being delayed. Hanke even provided a graph illustrating the difference before and after the shutdown.
Some players were disgruntled as Niantic blamed third party services for in game problems again, but Hanke remedied the anger by noting that they’re listening to community feedback and working on a solution for the in game Nearby tracker:
“We value feedback from our community. We have heard feedback about the Nearby feature in the game and are actively working on it.” – John Hanke, source