Can Niantic stop the hacking activities?
For example, limiting the playing hours/traveliing distance?
Answers
I believe there is a cap for walking distance. They also have checks for "suspicious" GPS activity. Niantic is very secretive about the exact checks they do. These checks were already in place at launch because they were developed for Niantic's first game, Ingress. The official website has a page for reporting players for cheating if you see it.
How about they just make a game people can't play then?
Seriously, you want them to limit play time or traveling distance?
First they limited the last of exp we can get in a day.
Then they prevented us from spinning pokestops and catching Pokémon if we are moving to fast which limited the usability of the GoPlus for passengers. I've even get soft banded many times by just sitting on a park bench but WIFI drift makes it seems I'm going 30MPH.
There is the gym lockout that can last up to 30 minites if we happen to drift while battling.
They were even banning players that reached level 40 a few months ago that spent allot of time and money trying to get to the max level fast.
It's a shame that they didn't block the Pokestop spinning whilst driving right from the launch - people got used to it, despite the game being about walking. I don't think they saw how the game would be abused.
I thought the time out for gym drift had been dramatically reduced?
I've no problem with them banning level 40 players if they really are cheats. How much money they've spent or what level they are shouldn't matter. if they've clearly gps spoofed, used multiple accounts etc. then yes get rid of them.
I think if Niantic were to stop the spoofers they would also stop all the tracking apps since they are based on the same hack of the GPS. On reddit they say if they had an altimeter reading along with the GPS location none of the spoofing hacks would work. Altitude info is all on Google Maps which is what PoGo scrapes for location data/maps. So the answer is yes but at what cost. Niantic needs to weigh the pros and cons very carefully.
