Niantic has revealed that it has punished five million cheaters in its mobile games since the start of 2020. A blog post from the company showed that the games affected were the ever-popular Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and AR game Ingress. Most shocking of all is the information that 20% of these five million players were permabanned, meaning 1,000,000 offenders were never able to return to the games.
Another fascinating reveal is that 90% of players who cheated in the games never offended again, a stat which Niantic refers to as “quite encouraging”. In the blog post the company also details its new anti-cheat initiatives including an investment in “new & emerging technologies” and the constant “tweaking and improving our existing detection methods”.
“We are committed to ensuring fair gameplay across our game portfolio,” Niantic go on to explain. “Every day newer forms of cheating or spoofing tools are made available on the internet, and we are continuously working to combat these cheaters and focus on improving our detection and enforcement; as they have no place in our games.”
You can find the original blog post below:
For an update on our recent anticheat efforts across Niantic games, see our blog post here: https://t.co/CDgG2NRCjS
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) February 24, 2021
But Niantic aren’t the only big mobile developer handing out bans. One of the most prolific recent examples is PUBG Mobile’s ongoing issue with cheaters, with Tencent reporting late last year that it banned over two million players from the game in a single week.
If you’re looking for other games similar to those made by Niantic, why not have a browse of our best location based games on mobile list?