Niantic is cracking down on Pokémon Go players who have been using a crafty exploit to farm up to 120 XL Candy per hour in Routes for weeks. As of today, the company is banning those involved, with penalties ranging from 30 day suspensions to permanent ones.
The exploit required players to create a route and use two external applications (OP Auto Clicker and GPS Joystick) on a jailbroken device, along with a certain combination of settings, to trick their device’s GPS into skipping to the end of the route over and over again, exceeding the limit.
Given how complicated it was, it’s not something a lot of players have done. But those who did confirmed their bans on Aug. 28, much to the delight of the community who believe anyone who did it should receive a permanent ban, regardless of how often it was.
But while everyone praised the move, some also used it as an opportunity to vent about how difficult it is to even find a Route.
“People are already exploiting routes, and yet the only one I have found by my house goes straight through a little kids house,” said one player. “I haven’t even found one route, and I live in a city with almost a million people in it,” added another.
It’s not their only gripe with the new feature, either. Routes have also been criticized by players for lacking incentive rewards, being too scarce in most areas, having a terrible design, and more.
Related: Pokémon Go players praise Niantic for one key change to Go Fest 2023
None of these issues have been addressed yet, but the community can at least rest assured knowing that Niantic isn’t letting those who do have access to Routes exploit them to gain an unfair advantage over others.
Published: Aug 29, 2023 01:40 am