{"id":73522,"date":"2025-07-18T20:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T20:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/73522\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T20:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T20:12:09","slug":"pokemon-go-fans-worried-raid-cheat-crackdown-is-finally-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/73522\/","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9mon Go Fans Worried Raid Cheat Crackdown Is Finally Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of the original inspiration for Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/a> was about getting people out into the real world walking, exploring, and meeting one another as they collect, battle, and raid fictional gyms. But times have changed. There was a whole pandemic. Walking around your neighborhood to endlessly grind for new rewards has lost its novelty. So, you can understand the appeal of a cheat that lets players raid gyms from farther away than is supposed to be allowed. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s Coming Out Beyond Pok\u00e9mon: The Indigo Disk | The Week In Games<\/p>\n

For a couple years now<\/a>, a GPS-scrambling trick has become a popular workaround in some quarters of the Pok\u00e9mon Go community. Players can toggle their GPS on and off, or shuffle between apps right before joining a raid to exploit \u201cGPS drift\u201d and make the game think their avatar is somewhere they aren\u2019t. Doing so extends the normal cut off distance for raids\u2014a little over the length of a football field\u2014to allow players to join from farther away. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a technique players have been talking about for years\u2014here\u2019s one how-to video on TikTok from May 2024<\/a>\u2014but recent Discord messages<\/a> warning players that the exploit violates Pok\u00e9mon Go\u2019s terms of service has stoked fears that they could soon be banned for having participated in what the game\u2019s developers consider to be cheating. \u201cWe have been informed today that use of GPS drift to swap out raid passes is against TOS,\u201d one of the messages<\/a> to fans read. \u201cNiantic can track it and is going to start cracking down on it. If you use it, you are flagging yourself to be suspended!\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is the team behind the game only taking action now despite talk of GPS micro drifting for years? One reason could be related to Pok\u00e9mon Go\u2019s ongoing tug-of-war between getting players out in the world meeting one another IRL and letting them pay to sit back and enjoy the collectathon from the comfort of their air-conditioned apartment. Raid passes which cost roughly $1.50 each let players join special battles from afar. Starting with the Crown Clash Take Over event in May<\/a>, players were allowed to begin using remote raid passes for Shadow raids as well, and Niantic also upped the number of remote raids players could do each day<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Given how wonky GPS tracking can be in Pok\u00e9mon Go to begin with, some players are now worried they\u2019ll get unfairly flagged for cheating if their character accidentally gets bounced around the map. \u201cMy bathroom sometimes launches me across town, I checked where I was once and it was a place 15 minutes away from where I lived,\u201d wrote<\/a> one player on the SylphRoad subreddit. \u201cI\u2019m a suburban player and will very often stop placed when I\u2019m driving to play from my car, especially when it\u2019s 90+ and humid out, and there are tons of errors when I have to restart the app to get it to register that I\u2019m no longer driving or am in a new area from where I was when I minimized it and started driving,\u201d complained another. <\/p>\n

Asked by IGN<\/a> for confirmation of whether GPS drifting was considered cheating, the Pok\u00e9mon Go team pointed to the cheating section of its TOS which states, \u201cUsing any techniques to alter or falsify a device\u2019s location (for example through GPS spoofing).\u201d As IGN points out, that section includes a ban on playing with multiple accounts as well, something that\u2019s also been a part of the game for years without any apparent major crackdown. So, is there a ban wave coming for people trying to remote raid for free? Or are players getting freaked out about a years-old exploit for no apparent reason? For now at least, Niantic seems content to let those fears persist. <\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n