Niantic has begun to bring down the hammer on the cheaters. They started by taking down third party sites that used their api’s to assist players in finding rare Pokemon in their real time locations. So now, they are moving on to more serious accounts of cheating. In specific, GPS spoofing and bot programs. By using these kinds of programs, your account could be banned and all your time and effort could be for nothing.
Niantic is taking these steps because they want to make Pokemon Go a place for people to have a “fair, fun, and legitimate game experience”. By using bots, players go against what Niantic wanted players to do. They want players to go out and explore the world rather than play the game from their couch just like any other video game. Some of the popular bots have started to shut down out in light of the bans. So this ban has started to do a lot in terms of the usage of the game starting with bot producers to shut down and users to stop using such programs.
In light of these bans, the Necrobot development team has ceased their development. Necrobot was one of the more popular bots used by players. On their page now they state that “all Source Files / Downloads will be removed.” meaning that no more people will be able to download it or use the codes they got to make their own bots. HaxtonBot and PokeMobBot are also moving to close down as well. Before when players did spoofing they only would not be able to catch any Pokemon or battle any gyms so it is nice to see that they are being punished a lot more than that now.