Tech

Hardcore Pokemon GO Players, Niantic Labs Will Soft Ban You After A Certain Amount of XP Even If You Didn’t Cheat

2016-08-22 , 3:36 pm

Guys, when it comes to Pokemon GO, I’m sure the thought of cheating at the game have crossed your mind.

After all, the game just launched in Singapore and you see Dragonites with high CP occupying gyms all across Singapore.

However, what if we told you that no matter whether you’re cheating or not, you’ll get a soft ban after gaining a certain amount of XP per day?

Check out what happened to this guy named Jimmy Derocher.

Niantic takes a serious stance against cheaters

Cheating was so bad in this game that the developers took a serious stance against it.

Players who spoof their location or does something to break the guidelines set by Niantic Lab will find their account permanently banned.

Niantic Lab’s anti-botting measures

The game faced a serious issue of botting by users and Niantic Lab decided to implement anti-botting measures against users who gain more than a certain amount of XP per day.

After amassing around 600,000 XP, Pokemon GO will implement a 24-hour soft ban on the account, making every Pokemon you meet run away and uncatchable.

Here’s the kicker, it doesn’t matter if you cheat or not

The game doesn’t differentiate between third party botting programs and legitimate training so as long as you got approximately 600,000 XP, you’ll get the “soft ban”.

Sick and tired of Pokemon GO players being labelled as cheaters

Jimmy Derocher was sick and tired of internet commentators labelling Pokemon GO players who gained a million XP over a weekend as cheaters.

He devised a route, together with Pokestops, catching Pokemon and carefully evolving Pokemon with the use of lures and lucky eggs.

In order to prove that he did it legitimately, he did a live stream on the event and even invited his friends to join him.

Thousands had even decided to go down in person.

Things went smoothly at first but…

After gaining about 600,000 XP through the use of lures, Pokestops, Pokemon captures and Evolving Pokemon, the in-game cheat prevention measures kicked in on his account.

Every Pokemon he encountered could not be captured and every single one of them escaped from him.

Wanted Niantic to know their anti-cheating measures is hurting other players

He wanted to show that Niantic’s anti-cheating measures while understandable, are placed haphazardly.

“I’m a bit of a hardcore gamer and I play somewhat efficiently, but the point is that I shouldn’t be hitting a 24 hr ban limit in just over half that time,” Derocher said. “Bots are far more efficient than humans are, and I think the effective soft ban was put in haphazardly…hurting a lot more players than I think they expected.”

But he still got some XP

Okay, but to be fair, he said that the soft ban only applied to capturing of wild Pokemon. He said that he still got some XP from spinning Pokestops and 25 XP when wild Pokemon ran away.

But seriously, 600k is still not bad

Okay, but I got to say that 600,000 XP a day is still pretty good. If you want to replicate his feat, just find a lap with 10 pokestops around and learn to maximise your XP gains.

We’ll say Chinese Garden is a pretty good place.