One ugly aspect of video games is that cheaters will always be there and trying to win in an immoral and unethical way. But game developers are also trying to overcome those cheaters, and now Niantic has joined the squad.
Niantic, the San Francisco-based company responsible for creating the highly-popular game Pokemon GO and other titles, wants to put an end to cheating and malicious behavior in its video games. In a recent blog post, Niantic said that it had improved its methods of spotting cheating behaviors in its games, as well as preventing gamers who are honest from getting punished incorrectly. The same post further wrote:
“As a result, we will be ramping up enforcement against these behaviors across our games, and rolling out our improved approach to anti-cheat. We are starting now by taking action against a number of accounts who we found to be in violation of our terms of service or player guidelines during recent in-game events in Pokémon GO.”
The company has shared a comprehensive guide for the activities that are considered cheating, and we must say that all of them are pretty justified to appear:
- using software that’s either modified or unofficial
- sharing accounts
- altering or falsifying your location using various techniques or tools
- playing with more than one account
- exploiting a bug deliberately to gain a reward
- abusing the mechanism and refund policy
- trading, selling, or buying accounts
- selling or buying currency or items from games on third-party platforms
- perform any other activity that violates the Terms of Service of Niantic, which you can see at the following link: Niantic Terms of Service – Niantic (nianticlabs.com)
It’s been plenty of time already since the new anti-cheat system has been under development by Niantic, and it’s great to see that finally, the company is applying it!
