Pokémon Go rose to fame within days of its arrival, and so did the cheats and hacks that would let players catch Pokémons without much sweat. However, Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go has now come up with a smart plan to troll the players who resort to cheating for catching Pokémons easily.
It is not new for Niantic to come up with ways to shun the cheaters. The company had earlier got rid of the third-party apps that used to show Pokémons around your area and their exact locations. These third-party apps were in violation of Niantic's terms of service and could have triggered the permanent suspension of players' accounts.
Niantic kept on introducing harsher rules to keep out the cheaters, but those barriers were not good enough for the reluctant cheaters who found loopholes and penetrated through the virtual boundaries. Some cheaters created bot accounts that scanned the nearby areas to spot rare Pokémons. But in this game of tit for tat between Niantic and the cheaters, the former has again carried out a strike on cheaters. As per a discussion thread on Reddit, Niantic has recently started “shadowbanning” cheats, scanners, and the bot accounts.
It means that if you are using any of the cheats mentioned above then Niantic could flag your account and you will only be able to see common Pokémons. It will make rare Pokémons disappear from your feed. What's interesting is, you will not come to know if your account has been flagged until you "only" see common Pokémons like Rattata around your location.
The Reddit thread says that the new anti-bot campaign by Niantic seems to target illegal bot accounts. However, there are fair chances that the next surge could be done on the user accounts that are suspected of using fake geo locations for GPS manipulation. For now, it is not clear how Niantic is running the shadowbanning operation, but The Silph Road subreddit community seems to be gearing up for bypassing the latest barrier planted by Niantic.
Well, it remains to be seen if the shadowbanning campaign by Niantic casts a far-reaching impact on the cheats.
