"Pokemon Go" developer Niantic is reportedly reversing the permanent ban that it has implied to some users who were caught cheating and using third party tools in order to hack the game. Niantic CEO John Hanke revealed in a blog that the bans were issued based on whether players were using tools that violate its terms of service.
"Pokemon Go" developer, however, emphasized lesser known mapping tools that sent signals to Niantic servers that seemed to be a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. It was what started confusion and caused the unnecessary banning of some "Pokemon Go" accounts.
Since the data transfers from some "Pokemon Go" mapping tools resembled something like DDOS attack, Niantic had to act in order to protect its servers. Because of this, the developer had to ban some accounts associated with using such add-on map tools. As a result, a small subset of users that were affected got confused why their accounts had to be banned just because of the simple add-on map tool.
Niantic is presently checking on all the accounts it has banned in order to reinstate those who were not knowingly violating "Pokemon Go's" terms of service. However, Hanke clarified that the use of add-on maps that scrape data from Niantic servers may still cause an account to be banned because it still violates the game's terms of service.
Hanke also added that those accounts they had initially caught from users who created accounts to scrape data from the game and used GPS spoofing techniques will stay as permanently banned. He explained that the aggressive banning will continue for players who engage in cheating and hacking activities.
"Pokemon Go" developers aim to implement a fair, fun and legitimate experience for all players according to Hanke. Niantic first began cutting access to some hacking apps and tools earlier this month while it started aggressively sending emails to permanently ban accounts about two weeks ago. Watch this "Pokemon Go" fake spoofing here.
