Trainers, it seems as the new Adventure Week: Taken Over event started, a new limit on Team GO Rocket battles may have been introduced that is causing some havoc for those who grind rockets particularly hard.
It seems that if you have contact with around (and potentially under) 100 Team GO Rocket grunts, and this includes spinning their stops and not battling them, you may get a temporary ban due to suspicious activity.
ZoëTwoDots has reported on this, as she received contact from fellow trainers in the earliest time zones sharing that they had been banned.
⚠️INFO – ACCOUNT BANNING FROM TEAM GO ROCKET GRUNTS⚠️
-Talking to TGR Grunts (not even battling) counts towards the encounter limit.
-Spinning a Pokéstop with a grunt counts towards the limit.
-The limit is UNDER 100 #PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/LaWHCPnkD1— ZoëTwoDots 🎀 (@_ZoeTwoDots) August 9, 2024
Over night it seems that this may have changed slightly as a friend of Zoë’s decided to test this limit and was not banned. However in the replies to Zoë’s post it is clear that people had received bans around the same time as their testing, and people are still banned at present.
⚠️ACCOUNT BAN – POSSIBLY FIXED⚠️ #PokemonGO
-Friend tested over 100 TGR encounters and didn’t receive the ban
-Testing occured only in the last hour, so not sure exactly when the limit changed
-If others have tests/data to add, please do!
-Looking like limit MIGHT be fixed 🤞 pic.twitter.com/FzZKKaY8UM— ZoëTwoDots 🎀 (@_ZoeTwoDots) August 9, 2024
As of right now we’ve no word from Niantic on what the issue is, or if there are new limits, but it does seem to be impacting the ‘whales’ who love to grind Team GO Rocket when new shiny Shadow Pokémon become available.
Before the event it was believed the limit for TGR battles was around 160 per day, because it was drastically increased pre-event, to then plummeting to a new unknown low that is less than 100.
Zoë has flagged this issue directly with Niantic, which we will lend our voices too. We understand the need for anti-cheat measures, but it is actually quite easy to encounter a large amount of TGR on a day spent in a city. Especially as merely spinning PokéStops with TGR on them seems to count towards this new limit.
Have you been wrongfully banned? Let us know on social media. We’d advise being careful with your Team GO Rocket battles for the moment, and not risking an unwarranted ban.
