Pokémon Go begins to give cheating players ‘marks of shame’

As part of its continued war on cheating in Pokémon Go, developer Niantic has confirmed it’s begun rolling out a form of branding to highlight offenders in the game.

In a Reddit post, a verified Niantic support account confirmed that players who use third-party applications to track rare Pokémon more easily will be punished accordingly. “Starting today, Pokémon caught using third-party services that circumvent normal gameplay will appear marked with a slash in the inventory and may not behave as expected,” writes account NianticGeorge.

Players have also begun to take to social media to show off the new anti-cheating features in action.

 

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— Gonzalez Monroy (@OKRODRIGO) June 21, 2017

It’s unclear how, exactly, this change will affect gameplay, although some players have reported on Reddit that “slashed” Pokémon will not give up candy if transferred to the professor. According to the same Reddit post, however, evolving these affected Pokémon seems to remove the slash — what would seem to be a major oversight from Niantic.

These new anti-cheating measures follow reports of similar initiatives from May, where players using third-party apps reported that their accounts had been flagged, resulting in only common Pokémon like Pidgey appearing in their games.

Meanwhile, June has been a big month for Pokémon Go, with Niantic confirming that revamped gyms and player raid battles are coming to the game “in the weeks ahead.”

Source: Kotaku