Pokémon GO has once again launched a campaign against cheaters. Pokémon that have been caught unfairly are now being banned again. Additionally, there are changes to EX-Raids.
Players are now reporting about this: From several communities, there are currently reports that Pokémon are being marked with a red strike. This issue affects spoofers, or cheaters, in Pokémon GO.
Moreover, it seems that spoofers are having issues receiving an EX-Raid invitation. This is also a new development and another blow against cheaters.
Niantic’s battle against cheaters is intensifying
Here’s what the new measures bring: If a Pokémon is marked with a red strike, you can hardly do anything with it. It is blocked for battles or gyms.
This measure was already implemented in 2016 and 2017 in Pokémon GO and suddenly disappeared in recent years. Now the red strikes are back and apparently more effective.
Previously, it mainly affected players who used bots. Pokémon that were not caught by hand were banned. However, there are now also reports of spoofers who caught every Pokémon manually and still received red strikes.
EX-Raid invitations can no longer be sent to many spoofers. Almost everyone who has received a warning from Niantic seems to be affected.
This makes it easy to identify cheaters in your community. If you are at least a Great Friend, you can try to send the affected player an invitation. If you only get an “Error,” then they probably received a warning from Niantic. The system seems to have been in place for some time, but was only recently thoroughly uncovered.
What exactly are spoofers? This type of cheaters manipulate their GPS location. Thus, they can sit on their sofa but can be running around the world in Pokémon GO thanks to the manipulation.
This violates the guidelines of Pokémon GO and Niantic pursues such players. There can even be permanent bans for this.
This is how the fight against spoofers is going: Currently, Niantic is quite active in the battle against cheaters. Recently, nearly every user of the cheat software “iSpoofer” received a ban or a warning. If cheaters log in again using this software, they will receive the next ban.
Previously, Niantic had also taken various measures. They sued a cheat provider, who then withdrew. Niantic itself reported in 2019 that they had banned over 500,000 cheaters from Pokémon GO and Wizards Unite.
By the way, there is good news for shiny hunters. 2 bugged quests are working correctly again:
