Niantic has shared an update on preventing cheating and malicious behaviors across all of the Niantic games, and rolling out an improved approach to detecting cheating and banning players accordingly.
The new system has been in development for quite a while now, dating all the way back to the beginning of 2021. Since then, Niantic has been working on a plethora of methods to be better at cheat detection, observability and fraud prevention.
The company shared that they are now able to “more reliably pinpoint these activities with higher speed and accuracy, preventing legitimate players from being punished incorrectly.”
Starting now, they are 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.
In addition, Niantic has shared that the new anti-cheat system will be integrated into all Niantic games to detect and punish players on a consistent and ongoing basis, rather than in waves, as they have done in the past.
Lastly, the company will be ramping up enforcement against these behaviors across all of their games, and rolling out our improved approach to anti-cheat in the coming days.
Niantic’s Player Guidelines clearly state which activities are considered cheating:
- using modified or unofficial software,
- playing with multiple accounts (one account per player),
- using tools or techniques to alter or falsify your location (“spoofing”),
- sharing accounts,
- intentionally exploiting a bug to gain reward,
- abusing refund policy and mechanism,
- buying or selling in-game currency or items on third-party platforms,
- buying/selling/trading accounts,
- or any other activity that is in violation of Niantic’s Terms of Service, available here: https://nianticlabs.com/terms/
