‘Pokemon GO’ Lifts Permanent Bans, Probs Cos Y’all Aren’t Playing Anymore

Pokemon GO has really become quite the spectacle, hasn’t it? It’s either triggering some hectic, Snorlax induced stampedes or worse, leading to actual deaths for various reasons. Should we be surprised? Yeah, nah. 
The latest development in the life of the augmented reality mobile game comes in the form of a statement from its creators, Niantic, announcing that it will be lifting some of the permanent bans it hastily dished out recently. 
Funnily enough, these ban lifts are coming at a time where Pokemon GO’s user engagement is on a rather heavy decline. 

Coincidence? Perhaps, but if you’re unbanning cheaters – the people who likely engage at a much higher level than regular users – you’re probably looking to give that graph a swift kick up the arse. 
The Pokemon ban hammer came down exceptionally hard on anyone that used third party apps or software that broke Niantic’s terms of service such as mapping software that shows you exactly where the Pokemon are hiding. 
Some of these tools are particularly heavy-handed in how they work, collecting player data which is sent to Niantic’s servers in a way that frighteningly resembles a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, much like the one that brought down the Census website on August 9. 
Much like the bumbling Australian Bureau of Statistics, Niantic shit their pants and immediately issued permanent bans to any player caught using the tool. The company’s CEO, John Hanke, has realised that this sweeping ban is probs a bit slack, considering most players had no intention or knowledge of causing such a shit storm for their servers.  
“Some players may not have realized that some add-on map apps do more than just show you nearby Pokémon.

Because of this we have had to ban some accounts associated with using these add-on map tools, leading to confusion by some users about why they were banned. This is a small subset of the accounts banned,” he said in the statement. 


To right this dreadful, unspeakable wrong, Hanke says they will move to lift bans on players that were unaware they were breaking Niantic’s terms of service. 
But this doesn’t mean ya can just start getting your cheat on. Anyone will still cop a ban, particularly if you’re using the slightly more ~flavoursome~ variety of hacks. 
“Add-on maps which scrape data from our servers still violate our Terms of Service and use of them may still result in an account ban going forward. Accounts whose sole purpose was to scrape data are not being unbanned. Accounts which used apps or websites to remotely capture Pokémon, battle or deploy on Gyms, or harvest resources from PokéStops are also not being unbanned.”

Delicious.

Source: The Verge.
Photo: Getty.

This article was written by resident Futurist Editor Matt Hopkins – the lovechild of PEDESTRIAN.TV‘s partnership with Telstra. To learn more about how Telstra‘s bringing the magic of tech to life + our project with them, head HERE.

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