Cheating Pokemon GO With Bots And Spoofs May Just Get You The Permaban Hammer

Luckily, developer Niantic is having none of this, and is taking extreme measures by permanently banning the most ruthless cheaters. When it comes to Pokémon GO, “cheating” pertains to GPS spoofing, using bots, modifying the software itself and/or leveraging the use of third-party app/services to access the client and server backends. GPS spoofing is particularly nasty, as it allows you to trick the game into thinking that you are in a completely different region (or country for the matter) in an effort to nab rare Pokémon.

Pokémon GO users have taken to reddit to express their displeasure (or acceptance) of the bans that have been dished out. One user, Zman965, acknowledged his ban and even went so far as to say that it was deserving:

I probably deserved it considering I went from level 22 to 28 in about 3 days. It would've been cool to show off my ridiculously OP account to some friends, but I can understand where Niantic is coming from with these permabans. It is unfair to legit players who grind Pokémon Go all day, only to encounter a CP 3,000 Dragonite and lv 30 at a gym.

For its part, Niantic says that it just wants to make sure that everyone is on a level playing field, and that cheaters simply aren’t welcome as far as it’s concerned:

Our goal is to provide a fair, fun and legitimate game experience for everyone. We will continue to work with all of you to improve the quality of the gameplay, including ongoing optimization and fine tuning of our anti-cheat system.

However, if you find that you’ve been banned, and you’re 100 percent positive that you haven’t been doing anything shady, you can fill out this form to file an appeal.