Niantic and The Pokémon Company have started waging their war against app developers who developed "Pokémon GO" trackers, successfully forcing two to go offline in the past few days.
According to WWG, both PokeSearch and PokéSensor shut down their services after being sent "cease and desist" letters from The Pokémon Company, which accused the app developers of improper use of the Pokémon Trainer's Club. While the letters were not lawsuits, these implied that legal action will be taken.
"Pokémon GO" trackers are third-party apps that are designed to help players find more Pokémon. PokeSearch and PokéSensor use automatically-generated PTC accounts in order to get into the game's servers. The information generated from this will then be sent to players.
Despite being forced to shut down, Patrick Ballard, who developed PokéSensor, said that he has no ill feelings toward Niantic, according to IBTimes. In contrast, the creator of PokeSearch was more ambivalent, saying that Niantic should realize that not all the players who use third-party apps do so to cheat the system.
PokeSearch and PokéSensor are not the only third-party trackers that The Pokémon Company and Niantic are pursuing. According to PokemonGoHub, several "cease and desist" letters were sent by the company to these developers. It also said that it has received no information yet if the developers of such apps are planning to pursue joint legal action against The Pokémon Company.
In the past months, Niantic has taken active steps to keep players from cheating in the game, saying that using these third-party apps will dilute the experience of playing "Pokémon GO" as it is intended. It set a limit of catching 500 Pokémon in a day, halving the original 1,000 daily limit. The number of daily PokeStop spins was also slashed from 2,000 to 1,000. These were done to hinder bot accounts.
According to speculations, the renewed strictness in the game is in preparation for major updates, which will include trading and a new Player vs. Player mode, which are scheduled for rollout in the coming months.
