If you cheat at ‘Pokémon Go,’ you’ll be ‘Pokémon Gone’

Niantic Inc., the company responsible for the wildly popular game “Pokémon Go,” has promised to ban cheaters.

Cheating at “Pokémon Go”? How’s that even possible?

You might be surprised at the lengths some people will go to catch them all.

In a notice posted on its website last week, the company lists reasons for banning: “Falsifying your location, using emulators, modified or unofficial software and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner including through the use of third party software.”

According to Tech Times, “GPS spoofing allows players to jump around to different locations in the world to collect hard-to-find Pokémon, while bots allow them to automate certain portions of the mobile game such as hatching eggs and evolving Pokémon.”

Yeah, people write programs to automate “Pokémon Go.”

It does not appear that the ban applies to every last form of cheating out there. So, as PC Magazine points out in its article on the bans, “Don’t take your smartphone off your turntable (or ceiling fan) just yet.”

What, you haven’t heard of that one? It’s no secret; Lifehacker posted this one back in July, for instance. If you spin your phone on a turntable or ceiling fan with the phone unlocked and the Pokémon app open, the app will think you’re walking around in circles, ultimately hatching your eggs sooner. Apparently some people have attached their phones to Roombas (beware the Poopocalypse!) or their dogs, too.

Precisely what behaviors will get you banned isn’t clear yet. Tech Times says that many of the bans have been handed out to cheaters with high-level Pokémon. Some “soft bans,” such as inability to catch Pokémon or gather items from Pokéstops, have been reported on Reddit.

This story was originally published August 14, 2016 at 4:47 PM with the headline "If you cheat at ‘Pokémon Go,’ you’ll be ‘Pokémon Gone’."