"Pokemon Go" has been going through a decline in the past few weeks. Players have been complaining that there is not much to do in the mobile game. As a result, Niantic Labs has been reversing bans for some "Pokemon Go" players to help bring the total active users back up.
The "Pokemon Go" creator has been lifting several permanent account bans that it mistakenly issued in the past. According to Niantic CEO John Hanke, his team started banning "Pokemon Go" players who used tools that violated the terms of service of the company. Included in the list of prohibited tools are third-party mapping apps that indicated where Pokemon were located.
The Verge revealed that Niantic initially prevented "Pokemon Go" players from accessing the prohibited apps earlier in August 2016. Afterwards, the company issued a wide scale permanent ban on accounts that broke their terms of service. Several third-party mapping tools and trackers gathered data on "Pokemon Go" players and forwarded it to Niantic servers, which Hanke deems as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The data transfers were apparently deemed malicious at the initial outset, compelling Niantic to indiscriminately and aggressively act to protect its servers.
Hanke wrote that due to the quick banning action of the company, they had to stop certain accounts that were connected with the add-on map tools. Some users were actually confused as to why they were banned. They consist a minor subset of the total accounts banned, according to the Niantic CEO. In the meantime, Niantic will continue to enforce its terms of service and ban "Pokemon Go" accounts that violate these. Niantic will disallow players who use apps or websites that remotely catch Pokemon, harvest resources from PokeStops and battle or deploy on Pokemon gyms.
Nintendo Life reported that at present, Niantic is looking through previously banned accounts to reinstate "Pokemon Go" players who unknowingly violated the terms of service. Hanke clarified that accounts that continue to use add-on maps that take data from Niantic servers will most likely remain banned. Hanke added that their main priority is to provide a fair, fun and legitimate experience for all "Pokemon Go" players. More updates and details on "Pokemon Go" are expected soon.
