If you’re one of the legions of Pokemon GO trainers who have been relying on cheats or third-party software to make your collecting more efficient, I have some bad news. Niantic is on to you, and they want you to stop.
In a note posted on the official Pokemon GO site, the developers have warned that anyone who uses emulators, modded software, or a variety of means to spoof their GPS location will be hit by the banhammer. A permanent one.
Your account was permanently terminated for violations of the Pokemon GO Terms of Service. This includes, but is not limited to: falsifying your location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or accessing Pokemon GO clients or backends in an unauthorised manner including through the use of third party software.
There’s always an opportunity to appeal the ban by submitting a support ticket. Given how swamped Niantic is with fixing and updating the game, however, I can’t imagine they would respond to those with any expediency.
So consider this a word of warning: maybe don’t GPS spoof. You don’t want to have to grind 400 Magikarp candies from scratch, now do you?
Comments
12 responses to “Pokemon GO Bans Can Be Permanent”
Will IV counter/rater calculation sites be included here? I don’t really understand the concept but have also abstained from using the ones that need you to actually hand over your game data for the computation so you can get the IVs faster.
Seems inevitable the ban will extend to that sort of action as well, right?
I can’t speak for certainty but my gut says no. Those calculation sites aren’t modifying the game in any way other than doing calculations for you quicker than you could if you used a pen and paper. Considering the sites are using the API’s that Niantic have left in the game to pull the information I’d say it would be fine, it’s pretty much just data analysis rather than cheating. Essentially like using a calculator in an exam.
I wouldn’t be so sure. The text quoted above explicitly defines that as a bannable offence.
I stuffed up in my post. There’s a question over whose property the ‘game data’ is I suppose, it’s not actually owned by the end user or is it?
I think the key is the term unauthorised manner. Using the API Niantic have left in the game wouldn’t be unauthorised. It would be like Blizzard banning WoW players for using mods that utilise the games commands in safe ways.
Again though, my comment is only speculation, Niantic might crack down on it but as it stands the data export sites aren’t doing anything malicious at the moment.
When you see stories talking about “Niantic’s API”, they aren’t talking about a publicly documented API: rather it is the reverse engineered API used by the Pokemon Go app to talk to the game servers. Taking your World of Warcraft example, this is closer to running your own independent version of the WoW client, rather than loading plugins into the official client.
While it is technically possible to access the game servers like this, it certainly doesn’t count as authorised access from a legal point of view: by default you have no right to access the service, and they’ve only granted you access to it through the official client.
If you’re talking about the types of site that ask you to enter your player level and the publicly visible stats for a pokemon, and then give you an estimate of the IVs, then I can’t see why they’d care or how they’d even know. All it is doing is interpreting information that the game publicly reveals.
I think they’re more concerned about techniques that make use of information that the game doesn’t reveal.
Yup, that’s what I thought. I wouldn’t want to hand over anything to do my log-in credentials and account to a third party. Although that is exactly what Niantic/etc are saying it is within its rights to do, like all the other services out there these days 😀
So they should be. Good riddance to cheaters.
Too late, stopped playing 2 weeks ago. ;p
Good…those invisible lvl 35 trainers who keep spamming my gyms with 2500+ Dragonites can go suck a dick.
They said it was too small!
considering they took down pokeadvisor, the guess is yes, bannable perhaps