The popular AR-based mobile game Pokémon GO, developed by Niantic, has recently seen account restrictions and bans on thousands of players. Niantic made a statement after this incident, admitting that the account restrictions and bans were caused by Pokémon GO’s anti-cheat system and that it was a system error.
Niantic support team made a statement on Twitter last Monday:
“We are making great efforts to undo restrictions for some players who have been inadvertently penalized on their accounts. This will be done automatically for players, regardless of whether they contact us or not. We apologize for the mistake.”
Many players have sent a report to the game’s customer support about the issue. The fact that this problem has occurred several times in the past bothers the players a lot.
Pokémon GO account restrictions take place in three phases, followed by a seven-day warning and an eventual permanent ban from the game, before moving to a 30-day account freeze. But apparently, somehow, the game’s automatic anti-cheat system kicked in and a large number of players found themselves caught in a bug that Niantic is now trying to reverse.
It is a fact that Pokémon GO has had many cheating players since its release in 2016, and Niantic has tried its best to ban these players from the game. Niantic continues to try to crack down on people known as “scammers” who use third-party software to trick the mobile game into thinking they’re in a completely different place from the comfort of their own home. In addition, Niantic announced earlier this year that it removed more than 5 million cheaters from the game in 2020.
Niantic made the following statements at the time:
“We are committed to playing a fair game in our gaming portfolio. New cheating or spoofing tools are made available on the internet every day, and we’re constantly working to combat these cheaters and focus on improving our detection and enforcement as they don’t have a place in our games.”
Although Pokémon GO is battling lots of cheats and malware, the game has never compromised on its quality and has generated $4 billion in revenue so far. The year in which Pokémon GO generated the most revenue since 2016 was 2020, when the peak period of COVID-19 was experienced.
