In order to investigate a serious exploit, Niantic has suspended the GO Battle League system six hours ago. The system is suspended until further notice.
The exploit, which was confirmed and documented to be used by at least one player, allowed players to generate extra energy from Fast moves during their Charged move animation.
It is still unclear how the exploit works, but various Trainers noticed that a player named JesusG1310 was able to fire off multiple Charge attacks in impossible scenarios. JesusG1310 raised to the top of GBL leader board in record time as well, which should be impossible by design given the low number of battles the offender participated in:
Kieng, an avid Pokémon GO PvP player, posted about this on Twitter, following a thread of reports posted by other players on Reddit and Twitter:
Ok so I just battled the guy that now 3 different people claim got extra energy on his Melmetal. Here’s my video. By my count he got 12 Razor Leafs on his Leafeon (48 energy) and somehow got two LB’s. Even if I missed 1-2, he was nowhere near the 18 RL necessary. https://t.co/SBEDhqWUw0 pic.twitter.com/DWHPJxsrKd
— Toshi9227 (@ShutupToshi9227) June 12, 2020
Niantic has shared an official statement about the GO Battle League shutdown. We’re sharing it here in full.
Note to Trainers Regarding GO Battle League Exploit
Trainers, we’re disabling GO Battle League until further notice, as we’re investigating a serious exploit. We’ll bring it back online once this exploit has been addressed. We apologize for any inconvenience this might’ve caused.
For more on this decision: https://t.co/9q1UQ1R35k— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) June 13, 2020
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Analyze the issue – Data analysis is the most important work we do during this process. Rash action (i.e. no analysis) can solve the immediate issue; however, it leaves the door open for the exploit to return in the future.
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Determine severity – Based on our analyses, we determine (a) the level of technical knowledge needed to abuse the exploit and (b) how badly the exploit harms the integrity of GO Battle League.
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Mitigate accordingly