There are a few places that are famous for Pokémon GO trainers. Zaragoza, Spain. Kinshichō Station, Tokyo, Japan. And of course, Kiribati. While Kinshichō Station is known for incredible Pokémon GO play, Zaragoza and Kiribati are infamous for a different reason, as spoofer’s paradises. Kiribati is unique in that it is the earliest time zone in the world, so every global Pokémon GO event begins there first. This global positioning makes Kiribati a hot spot for spoofing, with trainers faking their GPS co-ordinates to take advantage of early access to events.
Popular Youtuber TrainerTipsNick recently decided to answer the ultimate question, are there any legitimate trainers on Kiribati, or is it only spoofers? Nick is known not only for his Pokémon GO content, but his adventures making travel videos that happen to be because of Pokémon GO. He has flown to countries all over the world to play GO and meet different communities, and this was his trickiest journey yet.
Spoofing is a major breach of the Pokémon GO terms of service that players agree to when they sign up to the game. Despite regular ban waves, spoofers seem to find endless ways around the bans with new accounts and new ways to spoof, and Kiribati remains a popular location to spoof to despite how remote it is.
The first mission was to actually get to Kiribati itself. You can only fly there from either Fiji or Hawaii, with flights only once per week. This meant Nick would find himself on the island for a minimum of a week during Pokémon GO Fest Global: 2025. Surely this would give him the best chance of finding any legitimate trainers in person? After all, what dedicated Pokémon GO trainers would miss the chance to play the biggest event of the year?
After struggling to find a hotel, Nick managed to find somewhere to stay on the island of Kiribati most known for spoofers, Kiritimati, also known as Christmas Island. So remote is the island, that Nick was actually asked to bring over a container of food to the island on his flight by the hotel owners, leading him to meet up with their daughter on Hawaii!
In the spoofing heyday, Kiritimati was filled with PokéStops and gyms, though as Nick soon discovered, most of these fake points of interests have now been removed, leaving a lot less of a playground for trainers. Most of the remaining PokéStops and gyms are in London, one of the villages on the south end of Kiritimati, despite it not being the largest village on the island.
With a few days before GO Fest, Nick explored the island hoping to find someone playing Pokémon GO in person. He ran into some major problems, from a complete lack of signal on the island (and needing a 3G SIM card to even try to play off WiFi), to customs confiscating his camera after arrival. When he finally got a local SIM that let him load into GO, it began to become clear that the only people playing in Kiribati are indeed spoofers.
Nick posted in the Kiribati Campfire community hoping to find someone real, only to be greeted by either co-ordinates being posted, or people asking if they could be invited to raids. On GO Fest day Nick woke up early and was amazed to realise that the gyms were incredibly active, with lobbies filling up to 20 quickly, even before GO Fest started, with no human beings in sight.
With a population on Kiritimati of just over 7000, Nick knew his chances of finding anyone legitimate were slim. He joined basketball games, spoke to local children and adults, and even watched a football (soccer for you Americans) game, but no one had heard of Pokémon GO. In fact, it began to become clear that the way of life on the island is totally different, with very little internet access. With little internet access, the community isn’t reliant on phones as so many of us are, and Pokémon GO simply doesn’t have a place for them.
In the end, the closest Nick came to finding anyone playing Pokémon GO was a chance run in with some missionaries on the island who used to play Pokémon GO before they had come to Kiribati. It would seem that Kiribati truly is Spoofer Island.
