Pokemon Go players have voiced concern about potentially facing false bans during the game’s upcomingTaken Overevent.
As confirmed by Niantic, August 8 will mark an increase in Team Rocket activity, with two lucrative rewards,Shadow CresseliaandLugia, up for grabs for any Trainers who complete Special Research and Shadow Raids respectively.
Spawn rates forRocket Grunts in PokeStopswill also be increased substantially, and it’s this boost that has players “terrified” of incurring false bans.
In a lengthy post onReddittitled “I got banned so you don’t have to”, the thread’s author detailed how they tested interacting with the same Grunt – checking which Shadow Pokemon they had without completing the encounter – 160 times in succession.
Doing so, they claimed, resulted in their account receiving the following message. “We have detected unusual activity from your account. As a result, temporary limitations have been placed on your play.”
While temporary, the author, using Niantic’sthree-strike banpolicy as a reference, concluded that continuing the same action could result in a permanent ban.
Several responses to the thread, which went into much greater detail, voiced concern over inadvertently triggering Pokemon Go’s cheat-detection.
“Great, now I’ll be terrified of talking to Grunts while on a bus,” came one reply. Another said “This is concerning and I guess a ‘trick’ for Niantic to ban bots. Guess I’ve got to keep track and stay below 100 now to be safe.”
Others suggested that the message received by the original author wasn’t indicative of a ban but, rather, a “24-hour screen that happens when the PoGo client sends too many requests to the server in a given timeframe.”
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Whether any of the above ultimately has any bearing on Pokemon Go’s Team Rocket extravaganza remains to be seen but until then, you can find everything we currently know about the event on ourdedicated explainer.
Joe Pring is a Weekend Editor on Dexerto’s UK team, specializing in Gaming. His coverage areas include Destiny, Pokemon, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and other first-person shooter games. He also has bylines at WhatCulture and We Got This Covered. You can contact him at: joe.pring@dexerto.com
