Niantic, the studio behind augmented reality mobile games like Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and Ingress, would have punished more than 5 million cheaters since the beginning of 2020, more than 1 million players receiving permanent bans worldwide three games.
“We are committed to ensuring fair play in our gaming portfolio,” said Niantic’s blog post read. “Every day, new forms of deception or counterfeiting tools are made available on the Internet and we are constantly working to combat these scams and focus on improving our detection and enforcement, as they do not take place in our games.”
Niantic also said that 90% of players who received a warning immediately stopped cheating, a figure that the company considers “quite encouraging” as it tries to differentiate between disregarding its rules and “more blatant” attempts to gain control over developers.
That being said, it should be noted that “cheating” in Niantic versions is generally tantamount to falsifying the location with third-party programs to trick the game into believing you’re going through the city and not, you know, sitting at the computer. This type of behavior rarely destroys the experience for other users, but eats from Niantic’s income, the greatest sin of capitalism.
Pokémon Go did over $ 4 billion for Niantic since its launch in 2016. At least $ 1 billion of that came in 2020 alone.