Niantic has recently introduced a feature — called shadowbanning — to discourage gamers from violating the games' Terms of Service.
It was almost a year ago when "Pokemon GO" was released, much to the happiness of avid fans of the franchise. Many downloaded the product and still continue to use to this day, despite some mixed reviews.
At 500 million downloads from all over the world, it was a global phenomenon. But it also became a nuisance for some as there were reported accidents and public disturbance due to the carelessness of some players. This resulted in some countries regulating the use of the game.
With the popularity of the game also came the rise of bots and third-party software that sought to edge out other players in catching all the pocket monsters.
Anyone who has played it knows that the concept of the game is that one moves in your real-world surroundings to catch some Pokemon, but there are some players who use bots to go all over the globe to catch the rare Pokemon. Now, Niantic, the game developer of "Pokemon GO" has come up with a plan to discourage anyone who is planning on skirting around the game's Terms of Service.
The company calls it shadowbanning, according to Fox News. Unlike what other developers do, where they ban cheaters from playing the game, Niantic has instead opted that those players will only be seeing the most common Pokemon and none of the rare ones.
This means players will be able to see Magikarp, Pidgey and the like but should not expect to see Bulbasaur or Pikachu. This will be a hard blow to gamers, especially with Forbes reporting that with the anniversary approaching, players should expect some legendary Pokemon and player vs. player (PvP) battles to be added to the game soon.
Niantic has not given much detail with the shadowbanning, as the company probably wants to keep anyone from finding a way to escape it. At any rate, players of "Pokemon GO" who do not resort to cheating should be happy with the new game developments.
