Bots invasion terrorizes Pokémon Go players

Pokémon Go players were shocked to find a large-scale bot attack in their area. What if Team Rocket is real?

While Pokémon is primarily known for its hundreds of creatures to capture, another important element of the franchise is the existence of antagonistic groups in the image of Team Rocket.

While Pokémon’s big bads terrorize the populace in the video games and anime, it would seem that reality sometimes catches up with fiction.

In fact, scripters don’t hesitate to ruin the experience the game for many Pokémon Go trainers, with gigantic operations that are no match for Team Rocket’s Machiavellian plans.

Pokémon Go players assailed by bots

On TheSilphRoad’s subreddit, one user shared with the community the strange experience his local group of players is currently having on Pokémon Go:

“Since about Monday at 7:30pm, there has been a huge increase in activity in the arenas around where I live. And I’m not talking about kids who just discovered the app.[…]

It started with all the arenas turning white almost simultaneously in several cities dozens of miles apart. Then, these arenas were repopulated within hours, only by new accounts that no one had ever come across, and with similar name patterns.[…]

Every player who tried to take over an arena lasted about 15-30 minutes before losing it again, and at any given time. It almost feels scripted. This is clearly not kids teleporting to catch Pokémon, but rather an operation of enormous proportions.

Eby drawing a shape around the affected area on FreeMapTools, the perimeter of affected cities is about 43km. This conclusion comes only from players on a local Discord server who shared their discovery, there could be even more affected areas.”

In the comments, users explained that they have seen this kind of situation before, which would be especially common in areas known for their excellent arena density like San Francisco or Tokyo.

According to user tiki7iboo, the cheating process would be simple:

“You can create 1000 bots in one click, and send them to fetch shiny (the algorithm is well known by now), and sell each one for about ten dollars. I’d say the main goal is to make money (in addition to completing your own shiny collection).”

While it is acknowledged that Niantic is actively fighting against botting, it would seem that it is still very easy to cheat on Pokémon Go today. With attacks of this magnitude, these unscrupulous cheaters really have nothing to envy to Team Rocket!