A new anti-cheat feature ensures that detected bots cannot find rare monsters in Pokémon GO. This affects scanners and live maps.
If you use live maps in Pokémon GO, you may have noticed some changes in the last few days. Some maps were temporarily unavailable, while others showed significantly fewer monsters on the map.
One reason for the issues encountered by some scanners is Niantic’s new anti-cheat feature. This is designed to make it even harder for third-party providers to track monsters.
Niantic targets bots
A few days ago, the developers at Niantic activated a new security feature. This targets bot accounts that have been detected by the system. Specifically, it targets accounts that are used by third-party trackers. These accounts are no longer supposed to find rare Pokémon and will, therefore, be less interesting for spoofers relying on such maps.
Third-party maps are often used to find rare Pokémon and then catch them. With the new feature, bots used to discover Pokémon on the live maps will only see “unspectacular” monsters.
As an example, here are two screenshots from the Pokémon Dev Discord, taken by two different accounts at the same time in the same location.
While the left account, marked as a bot, only sees a Geodude nearby, the right screenshot also shows Omanyte, Kabuto, and Zubat. Which monsters in Pokémon GO are now considered “rare” and therefore not shown in the tracker is still unclear.
This feature does not immediately kick all cheaters out of the game and does not solve the problem with fraudsters, but it paves the way for future anti-cheat features.
Of course, live map users are not in favor of these changes. Although many map providers have already created new accounts with which they can again track rare Pokémon, there will likely be more frequent outages of the maps in the future if Niantic continues to work on these features.
What do you think about Niantic’s fight against live maps? Is this measure good, or should they be more specific against other cheaters and keep live maps “alive”?
