A number of Trainers has reported that spoofers and GPS snipers are now being targeted by Niantic’s new “slashed Pokémon” mechanism. See our What are “Slashed Pokémon”? guide if you’re out of the loop.
A few important things:
- The new ban wave is not global, nor does it target all spoofers
- The new ban wave targets mostly players with erratic movement patterns
- We don’t know if the slashes are permanent
We’re trying to verify how widespread is the new “slash-ban-wave”, but it seems that it’s mostly targeting players who’ve been consistently using GPS spoofing methods to jump around a wider regional area.
This mainly includes players using maps to “snipe” high IV rares, regional collecting globetrotters and other malicious variants of GPS abusers. The common trait among all affected players is a lack of caution and severe use of GPS spoofing tools.
We are able to confirm that this ban wave does not rely on detecting 3rd party app usage specifically, but uses historical player location data to observe irrational and impossible movement patterns.
It’s unclear how much data/offenses are required to flag yourself as a spoofer, but one of the Trainers who reached out to us shared the following:
“I only went to JP once or twice for a couple of hours, couldn’t get Farfetch’d, went back, took 1 gym and now half of my screen is red. Can you help???!”
Curiously, this appeared in one of the largest Discord cheating groups:
As the situation develops further, we expect a few things to be answered:
- Does the algorithm still only ban botted/snipped Pokémon or anything is a target?
- Are only Pokémon with legacy moves targeted?
- Are slashes permanent or they go away after a week/two?
Stay tuned for more news, we’re watching this one closely.
