Pokemon GO is still going strong after being a dominant cultural phenomenon for all of summer 2016, when it launched. Pokemon GO has maintained a dedicated fanbase that has spent countless hours catching and leveling up their favorite Pokemon, but now players are being caught in a ban loop.

Pokemon GO is no stranger to bans, legitimate or not. Developer Niantic said early this year that it had banned over 1 million cheaters last year, while in June of that same year the company mistakenly sent bans out to players playing on iPhone that hadn't done anything wrong. Pokemon GO is in the middle of its Spring into Spring event that sees many new updates arriving in the game, but some players are unable to partake in the fun because they are being hit with what they say are unjust bans.

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Players are now coming out claiming that after receiving a standard 7-day ban they are logging back into the game to find that they are being immediately hit with an additional 7-day ban, sometimes up to four times in a row. In speaking with Eurogamer, some of the Pokemon GO players being impacted by the repeated bans admit to deserving the initial 7-day ban while others are claiming that they didn't, but there is no way to verify those claims.

Regardless of how legitimate the initial ban is for these players, the repeated bans do not adhere to Niantic's stated three-strike anti-cheat policy. The policy dictates that for a player's first cheating infraction they will receive a 7-day ban followed by a 30-day ban for a second occurrence and a total ban for a third. What is happening to these Pokemon GO players is not aligned with this at all, especially when they are being banned after not being able to log into the game for the previous 7 days.

Regardless of whether or not players deserved their initial 7-day ban, it is unfortunate to see players being impacted so severely by what appears to be a bug with Niantic's anti-cheat measures. This all is especially unfortunate when the bans are stopping players from accessing accounts that they have invested countless hours and possibly money into. It is good that Niantic has measures in place to combat the rash of cheaters that play Pokemon GO, but hopefully, some fine-tuning of its systems will fix the problem for these players and ensure that it does not happen to other players in the future as well.

Pokemon GO is available on Android and iOS.

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Source: Eurogamer