Pokemon Go has always been full of scammers using third-party cheats to steal other players' rewards, and it's getting worse for trainers in local communities.
Cheaters, in the form of a Pokemon Go parody, have proven to be a major problem for the game. This was not a new problem, on the contrary, as social posts and forums had been regularly circulating online from the beginning.
Niantic officially states in Game policy: “We define cheating as behaviors that violate our Terms of Service, Player Guidelines, or Live Event Code of Conduct, such as location spoofing (GPS location spoofing).” Despite this, a large number of players still easily impersonate and trick Niantic with their GPS trackers to steal various in-game rewards.
The more remote and local your community is, the more likely you are to encourage scammers to establish themselves with multiple accounts and steal all your gyms and raids.
Now, if you are in a popular city for example, you may move to several other places or may disappear after a few days. However, if you're not lucky with a set of gyms or raids to target, this will often “dissuade almost all local 'real' players from playing at all.”
One country player to explain: “This would be acceptable if this hadn't happened over a year and a half of gameplay at all, endless reports on these accounts from multiple people over that time period and absolutely nothing was done about it.”
Although Niantic has taken measures to report these alleged cheaters, players are not convinced. The same player backed this up and stated that he was “pretty sure the report cheat button is fully displayed at this point.”
Another responded: “We have areas where it's the same player over and over again. It's pretty obvious there's a large number of multiple accounts. Even though it's against the rules. It's also crazy what rules Niantic does, and doesn't do.”
Unfortunately, there are no signs of the issue being resolved anytime soon as players continue to become angry and demand change to an ongoing Pokemon Go issue that has been going on for more than seven years.
If anything, the spoofing has gotten worse over time thanks to Niantic's Remote Raid Pass nerfs, which has led players to believe the developers are trying to make them a spoof.
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