Niantic Labs, team behind Pokémon GO, banned several players for using third-party applications to capture Pokémon more easily. Now, the studio is giving back their accounts to some users, but it warns that they could banned again if they influence on these actions.
“Some players may not have realized that some add-on map apps do more than just show you nearby Pokémon” said Niantic on its website. “Each end-user app can be used as a collection tool by the app creator, invisibly collecting and forwarding data to the app creator with or without the knowledge of the end user.”
“These apps can have an effect similar to DDoS attacks on our servers,” the studio continued. “Because of this we have had to ban some accounts associated with using these add-on map tools, leading to confusion by some users about why they were banned. This is a small subset of the accounts banned.”
The studio said that as a result of some changes in its infrastructure, now they have unblocked a set of accounts, but warned that the additional maps continue to violate the terms of service and gives them permanent ban accordingly.
“Accounts whose sole purpose was to scrape data are not being unbanned. Accounts which used apps or websites to remotely capture Pokémon, battle or deploy on Gyms, or harvest resources from PokéStops are also not being unbanned,” said Niantic. “Our main priority is to provide a fair, fun, and legitimate experience for all players, so, aggressive banning will continue to occur for players who engage in these kinds of activities.”
Recently, the game added the option to view statistics for attack and defense of your creatures, and according to a recent discovery of the application code, the exchanges in Pokémon GO could come soon.
