Some "Pokémon GO" players have figured out a way to cheat the system and catch rare Pokémon. This has been brought to the attention of the game developer, Niantic, and players who have been caught using the cheat have had their accounts soft banned.
This comes a month after the announcement of Niantic on their official Twitter account that they were working on something to remedy the issue.
Thanks for all your reports. We’re working to add functionality to stop spoofing, and your reports are helping us with our investigations.
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) April 18, 2017 " data-caption="null" data-credit="Twitter/NianticHelp">A Reddit post confirmed the official banning of snipers and the disabling of the cheat by Niantic. The game developer has yet to release an official announcement regarding the blocking of sniping, but gamers are hopeful that the cheat is permanently disabled from "Pokémon GO."
Sniping and spoofing are similar to one another wherein the player fakes their GPS location to be able to capture a Pokémon that's far from their current location. This also allows them to use the Pokémon to take down any Gym so that they have the chance to rebuild the Gym. The player is simply able to go around the world in the game while staying in one place in real life just so that they are able to capture rare Pokémon that cannot be found where they are.
These cheats were used by a couple of people, and when found to be working, more and more players of "Pokémon GO" started using it, leaving the fair players of the game frustrated. It is only right for Niantic to come up with a method that will enable them to detect whether a player is using their actual location or cheating their way through the game.
"Pokémon GO" players are now expected to only catch Pokémon that can be found within the area that they are actually located in. These are the first steps of Niantic when it comes to banning cheats from "Pokémon GO," so it is expected that they will come up with more solutions in their upcoming updates.
