‘Pokemon GO’ Cheaters Flagged By New System Will Only See Common Monsters

Niantic is once again on a crackdown mode as “Pokemon GO” players develop new methods to cheat the game by not walking to catch monsters. The latest way to cheat the system is by creating bot accounts to scan the nearby areas to spot and notify rare Pokemon. To catch the cheats who create bot accounts, Niantic has started shadowbanning the accounts, cheats, and scanners.

Those who are suspected of cheating are flagged by Niantic’s system. However, “Pokemon GO” players would not notice immediately they have been flagged because they could still catch monsters. However, as time passes, the cheaters would notice they could no longer spot rare Pokemon and only manage to catch the very common ones such as Rattata and Pidgey, Android Authority reports.

Hitech Gazette reports that in April, Niantic updated “Pokemon GO” to make it more difficult to use cheating methods to capture Pokemon. The technique, called “sniping,” spoiled the experience of other players and made the competitive game unequal, Niantic said. The answer was to put in place a strong component of randomness into the appearances to make catching rare Pokemon more difficult.

Niantic’s new anti-bot trolling system mainly targets “Pokemon GO” with illegal bot accounts. Those who manipulate the GPS may or may not be affected. But according to a Reddit thread, Niantic is aware some players manipulate the GPS, so these type of cheaters may one day be flagged also by Niantic, Android Headlines reports.

Before shadowbanning, Niantic banned third-party apps that let “Pokemon GO” cheaters see all the monsters around them and the exact locations of the Pokemon. The game developer banned the accounts of those who continued using third-party apps.

Although it is not clear how Niantic identifies and flags the bot accounts, “Pokemon GO” players are confident they could also develop a method to outwit the shadowbanning by the game developer. In turn, this will lead Niantic to move another level up in catching cheaters.