They could tackle it by really caring about it. My guess would be it is good for business in some way. When the game first came out people were saying that Niantic knows how to deal with spoofers because they have been dealing with them in Ingress for a very long time. These methods are not new to them, it comes down to how they want to spend their time and energy.
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Bans refarding spoofers
I read that theres is a banwave currently in progress but only bots are being banned and not spoofers. Also read that its really hard for niantic to target spoofers. Do u guys know anything or have any idea as to how niantic could tackle the spoof issue?
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It's definitely good for business, spoofers probably spend money on coins because even at 100 coins a day you can't run incubators all the time, and I'm sure there are plenty of spoofers who want to run incubators to get as much stardust as possible. Spoofers are probably a huge percentage of their revenue. On top of that it's so easy for them to hatch the eggs because they don't actually have to "walk"
This, and I want to add, that spoofers take a LOT of gym places for legit players, so we have to buy more coins too because of them. It is a perfect business if you think about it.
Not only for older players but also for the newer ones, it is so easy that a low level enter the game, and when he/she sees the gym situation thinks, ok let's just buy some coins because I can't never enter into a gym...Without actually knowing that there are spoofers and cheaters that are in like 100 gyms each one. The cheater mentality is, if I can do it, why not? If you have 200 Dragonite, why not put them in gym? If you can get anything you want? Why not?
So yes, cheating and spoofing it is indeed a business for Niantic, they don't see cheaters, they see accounts, hours played and revenue, nothing else, proof is that they are focusing on bots for the health of their servers, not on spoofing at all.
Great answer and hits the nail on the head, IMO.
Just an alternative opinion: as long as spoofers pay like we all do, is it really so harmful for Niantic? Spoofer income is income after all and it may well be that they are also co-funding the development of the game with their coin purchases.
Also: and this is radical: does Pokemon Go really need to be played outdoors and by walking around.... I mean, lots of mobile phone games can be played and enjoyed just sitting at one's desk.....
Important Disclaimer: this post is to continue discussion, I am certainly not endorsing cheating in any shape, way or form.
Well, I know probably some players think different way, but for me if Pokémon Go was not actually a get out home and walk game I would never play it, the other Pokémon games are like milions of ages better than GO in terms of content, the only thing that makes Pokémon GO special for me is the GO part, I can play it without much focus or feeling that I am "losing" my time, on my way to work or back home, while I just go out for a walk on weekends, open it while drinking a coffee or a beer in any bar, etc...
That is why spoofers and cheaters are so bad for this game (not for Niantic, but for us), because without the GO part, it is useless, it has nothing special, think about it.
Yes, the fitness part and the AR is what makes this game special. And Niantic should start working more on that. I am not talking about walking hundreds of km for hatching an egg for example because that can be easily fake by spoofers, but maybe some features like go to a graffiti stop, use ar, and you might find a clue printed into some part of your screen that starts a chain of quests to get a legendary.
This kind of things would make spoofing more difficult and are adding value for us legit players, new features, new things that also target them for doing it wrong.
One of the ugly truth about this is down to management...
One recent report indicates that PGo has lost ~90% of users since its peak in July.
Another report indicates that PGo currently has only ~500k daily users. http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/813208/Pokemon-Go-NEWS-Niantic-Legendary-update-earnings-money-reveal
If Niantic bans spoofers and cheaters, the number of daily users will drop by more than half. The appearance of such drastic decline of daily users is simply bad from a management perspective. So, they do things like shadowban and such to manage the appearance of daily users.
If you don't believe the above, just google Niantic's efforts in banning GPS spoofers in Ingress... They are capable of doing it, but are said to have "other, higher priorities" to tend to.
Ugh.
That is probably true. Looking at my son and his friends I guess that 999 out of 1000 below the age of 15 have quit playing and moved on to other games.
Not surprising since they´re not into movesets, battle simulations and such stuff. They just want to collect new species and the game is just too unthrilling for them after a while.
Btw I also read lots of stuff saying that cheaters make up like 40-60% of players. Do you think thats true? I mean it could look like the number of cheaters is bigger than it really is simply because with their schemes its easier to be present in a wide area and in lots of different places but in the end a city and near cities or even bigger areas could just be only a few dozen cheaters.
In my town I can confirm that the numbers are more like 70-80% of the ACCOUNTS at least, I can't talk about players because probably a good amount of spoofers have multiple accounts, but I know from first hand that the gyms in my part of the town (4) are almost always being fight with spoofing tools. I spent a week tracking their "job", each time I saw one of the 3 gyms that are visible in the map from home I went there to check, I was shocked when I saw the numbers at the end of the week, 2/3 gyms are not accessible with a car or a near building, one is a fountain and has nothing around it except from some benches, the other is a small park, again no building around or parking place for cars. In a week of tracking I collected around 30 different accounts names, all spoofers, from the 3 teams, and just 3 times I went there to check I saw a player around looking at their phone, so 3/30, the numbers don't lie.
Also going out and playing I have not seen many other people doing the same, maybe they go out on different times who knows, but I have played at almost every hour of the day and only met 3 other legit players on the streets and seen like 5-8 actually swiping their phones like catching something on the last months.
I don't know how it is in other areas, my town is quite "small" and 25km away from a big city, probably spoofers find it nice to come.
Or probably people from bigger cities and with more player base are not noticing it as much just because of that, when the population is bigger there are not isolated gyms, so when you find a gym that is being fight by spoofers it may seem that anyone in the street or buildings around it is actually doing it...
Someone might suspect I'm a spoofer 'cause I try to take down gyms discreetly (I know hidden places that can access them). Why? Don't know, but some rural players can get very possessive of "their" gyms and my 11-year-old son was once harrassed by a grown man when he battled a gym (he has since stopped playing, I think that's a main reason).
On the other hand, I would like to meet my team mates and sure don't want to be suspected of cheating....
That is brilliant. If an account is flagged (and that is happening now for suspect activity) the spoofer still sees gyms where they are but when he tries to interact with them he is transported (teleported, hehe) into an alternate Pogo universe just for cheaters and never knows the difference! Niantic cheating the cheaters, LOL!
The recent shadowbans were against bots and third-party apps that use your account and password. From what I understand, which is pretty crude, those programs are usually accessing Niantic's servers using an older version of the API, because it takes a while to crack the API after each update. Accounts using an old API after Niantic has forced the update in the official version of the app are very clearly distinguished as cheating in some way with no accidental hits against legit players.
Players that are using the current phone app and spoofing their phone's GPS might be detectable but are not as clearcut so might catch some false positives.
Wanted to add that I doubt spoofers really pay much, if any money...Seems like if you are cheating and can spoof, it's easier to spoof to weak gyms and just cheat there. Also, there is very little to buy in the shop so a spoofer wouldn't be wise to waste money when they can easily get 100 coins a day...Once storage is maxed, other than incubators, there is really not much to buy. I assume unless you joystick, they aren't hatching much eggs.
I also read Niantic gets paid for each unique Pokestop spin so that's where they also make money from any player, spoofer or not and why if a large percentage only play because they can spoof, they may not want to shut them down...I assume spoofers spin massive amount of stops since they can spoof to a good spot.
They (Niantic) also needs it for their performance metrics as stated...
Exactly - Niantic can "pad" their player base for advertisers.... I also agree that spoofers are unlikely to pay real money for coins, but they do benefit Niantic in occupying many gym slots and making some legit players spent money. Gymhuntr used to show the stats for how many gyms held per team, and I think the total was around 500K gyms - so if truly only 500K active players remaining in this game we could all have 10 PKM in gyms and no one would ever need gym battles for coins! I'm suspecting the gym rework is to partially address this future liability..
