Niantic Files Lawsuit Against Pokémon GO "Hackers" Helping Players To Cheat

About time. Spoofers are the worst

Nintendo sued Galoob over the game genie and lost. Go is for the most part a single player game so they aren't really hurting others with cheating. If they want to stop it then they should fix the exploits.

@GameOtaku Go is a single player game? Seriously?

@GameOtaku aside from the fact that they both allow for cheats, this is completely different. They're positing that this service drIves away legitimate customers. Pokemon Go has microtransactions, and this company is offering their services for money. Niantic is after potentially lost profits. Game Genie didn't blatantly impact Nintendo's bottom line because people still had to buy their games; their case was that Game Genie creates an unauthorized version of their property.

@Kalmaro
All I've seen of the game is just players throwing ball at Pokemon and maybe or maybe not catching them. The game is "primarily" single player.

I kinda hope spoofers aren't affected. Not gonna spoof myself, but if trading with a spoofer is what it takes to get a dang Fatfetch'd, Kangaskhan, and Mr. Mime without having to spend a crap ton of money to travel to Japan, Australia, and London (money that Niantic doesn't get a penny of, so I don't see the point of these region exclusives), then I'd rather trade with a spoofer. Aside from the region exclusives, I just need like 5 Pokémon to complete the Kanto Dex.

@GameOtaku but cheater get more stuff and therefor won’t spend money on it

And the raid battle is multiplayer

@KayFiOS Didn't they have Safari Zone events to catch Pokémon not previously available in your region?

Why can't some people just play stuff the legit way? What's the use of playing something when you can just cheat your way to the top? What sense of accomplishment you get from that?

@NorseGamerTommy Not in America, and even if they did, I'd probably have to leave Arizona for it. It would probably be cheaper to pay a spoofer on eBay for these Pokémon (seriously, this is a thing people do because the region-exclusives are even a thing.)

@Tantani
Raid battles are optional you don't have to participate.

I find it funny actually how cheaters are exploiting the pay to win gameplay and how ridiculous the free to play with micro transactions are, man I get tired of those candy crush commercials! If someone had enough money to throw away on this game they could easily be as bad as cheaters, they are basically cheating anyway!

@GameOtaku me to my friend, but this is what they probably thought

Who needs that?
Just lie about the position of your device.

If I could, I would spoof my location to get the region exclusives only. I am not spending money to travel to other countries just to get a pokemon here or there. I understand that they occasionally have events where region specific pokemon change regions for a few days/week a but that all depends on whether or not you happen to be playing at the time and/or paying attention to PGO news. Everything about cheating can burn though 👍

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. Get these people away from our game

How hard is it to play the game as intended? It’s like people will die if they don’t cheat.

These guys ruin the experience for everyone involved. It's never fun to conquer a gym, and to be knocked right out of it even when there is no one else around you!

Everyone thinking nintendo is in charge of that stuff, but only game freak, the pokemon company, and niantic can do stuff about it

@Ryu_Niiyama Pretty hard if you're trying to complete the pokedex or do raids in areas no one plays at.

Otherwise, the game is easy.

One of my buddies got all 151 Pokemon by location spoofing when it first came out, he still has them all. He isn't spoofing anymore obviously.

@GameOtaku Sorry, but you clearly haven't played it much if at all. While the game was single player at its start, gym battles and raid battles are a core focus of the game at this point.

@Heavyarms55 Not to mention the friendship system with gifting, trading, and battling. Where I work, there is an entire community of Go players that help each other out and meet up for raids.

@Nekonokatzen Yeah, most of my coworkers are 5-25 years older than me, but several of them have PoGo accounts and we occasionally trade and swap gifts too.

@liljmoore Because niantic took away the only way they could play there are a lot of people out there that have mobility issues some can't even go outside some get around by bus or train and since niantic made it so they couldn't do that they are only left with spoofing.There is also people who live in rural areas niantic has come and and said that they don't care about the rural community and told them to go tothe city a lot of them can't

@Ryu_Niiyama Pretty hard actually expecially for people who can't go outside or live in the country or there only way of playing was to ride the bus,train,someone driving them niantic took that away from them and are left with cheating. Granted most of them don't have this problem but there are people out there that do.

Shrugs then play another game.

its also funny that niantic is blaming the "hackers" for driving away customers when just 3 years ago niantic effectivly drove away %75 of the player base by taking there sweet time putting tracking back in by the time it was back in a lot of people left me included. I tried getting back into it but niantic has taken away the fun harry potter wizards unite has replaced pogo lets hope they don't ruin that game as well