Niantic May Have Started Perma-banning Pokemon GO Players

Pokemon GO has now been an active fad for some time, yet little has been done about its myriad of GPS spoofers and players who were generally playing with unauthorized third-party assistance. That time may well be behind us now, though, as it would seem Niantic has started issuing permanent bans to certain players.

Earlier today a Redditor posted apparent evidence of their Pokemon GO account receiving an IP ban for the violation of the Pokemon GO Terms of Service, which came as a cold shower to a number of players who got around by spoofing their GPS location.

However, another vigilant Redditor decided to try and provoke Niantic into giving him a perma-ban by aggressively botting on a throwaway account, yet nothing happened.

At the time of writing, the bot has been doing its thing for four hours with no issues whatsoever, which brings the above example into question. The tester has found that the usual soft-bans are still given whenever an obvious transgression occurs, yet nothing more serious seems to be taking place.

Additionally, a fair few players have reported a number of additional soft-ban techniques. These include, but may not be limited to, instances of player being able to catch Pokemon, but not interact with PokeStops and vice-versa, PokeStops spinning infinitely and all Pokemon showing up as if they’re out of range and more.

Niantic have also apparently taken serious action against bot developers, with cease and desist letters having been sent. Their operation has been seemingly shut down, but for how long remains to be seen.

Check out more:

• Star Wars’ R2-D2 Actor Kenny Baker Passed Away at the Age of 83
• Quick Deal: Get No Man’s Sky on PS4 for $48
• New Dota 2 Hero Monkey King Coming This Fall

This post was originally written by Filip Galekovic.