Niantic, the developer of Pokémon GO, apparently posted a video on Twitter that disappeared shortly thereafter. What was happening?
What was that post? In the Pokémon GO subreddit, a user shared screenshots showing a video that the official Niantic account is said to have posted.
According to the post, the video was simply about going out and discovering the world – a post that Niantic often shares on social media. However, the video was apparently deleted after about half an hour. The reason: Apparently there were players who “cheated”.
Here you can see the post, which currently has over 2,600 upvotes and more than 270 comments:
Multiple accounts at once are considered cheating
What is the problem? The post shows that people appear in the video who, strictly speaking, violate Niantic’s terms of service. Among other things, a player is shown playing on two cell phones at the same time, and another who does the same thing on two accounts via split screen. But Niantic doesn’t really want to see multi-accounting.
These are the official rules: Niantic’s Terms of Service list various actions that qualify as fraud or cheating. These include the following points:
Excerpt of Terms of Use, via nianticlabs.com
Such actions can theoretically lead to bans if caught. In the video, however, that was apparently briefly lost sight of – at least until it was deleted shortly afterwards. According to the current status, however, neither the original nor an updated version of the video can be found on Niantic on Twitter.
What is the community saying? In the discussion about the bug, players are amused about the bug. For example, a user writes “I don’t know how, but Niantic needs to be banned from Pokémon GO” (via reddit). Others joke that using multiple accounts is now allowed (via reddit).
Other users are rather irritated. “Really weird how many random mistakes they make,” writes one user (via reddit).
In recent weeks, there has been increasing criticism of developer Niantic after the popular long-distance raid passes in the game became more expensive and limited to 5 raids per day. Parts of the community expressed frustration with the changes and hoped for a withdrawal. So far, however, there are no signs that something like this is planned.
Meanwhile, a report indicated that Pokémon GO may have seen a drop in revenue as a result of the changes. However, Niantic has now responded to this message and stated that this was incorrect. You can read more about Niantic’s statement on Pokémon GO earnings here.