No one likes cheaters, but the sad reality is that as much as developers try to prevent cheaters, there will always be cheaters in video games. Companies such as Blizzard have implemented a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cheaters, banning them outright when caught, but Niantic appears to be taking a more lenient approach.
In a post on the Pokemon GO website, Niantic has announced that they will be instituting a three-strike policy when it comes to Pokemon GO cheaters. As the name implies, this means that cheaters have basically three chances before they are banned from the game, with Niantic claiming that these strikes serving as a warning because “everyone can make mistakes”.
According to Niantic, they have defined cheating as behaviors that violate the game’s Terms of Service and Trainer Guidelines, such as spoofing your GPS location, accessing Pokemon GO clients or backends in unauthorized manners, and using third-party software (which Niantic has warned about in the past).
Each strike will also vary in punishment, with the first being a warning where players will be excluded from certain features in the game and lasting for seven days. The next will be more severe where players will temporarily lose access to their account for 30 days, and the final strike being where players are banned permanently.
Filed in . Read more about Pokemon and Pokémon GO.