While Niantic has gone to great effort to shut down third-party tracking apps for Pokemon GO, the company has done little to stop an entirely different type of cheating app.

Pokemon GO developer, Niantic, has been under a storm of criticism ever since their latest update caused numerous bugs and glitches to the augmented reality game. In addition to the host of bugs that the update introduced, many fans were angered by the removal of the PokeTracker feature from the game.

Along with the update, Niantic forced the shutdown of various third party apps such as Pokevision, that gave players an advantage when hunting Pokemon. Niantic claimed the reasons behind the shutdown was because the third-party apps were causing issues with the the game's servers.

However, it appears that Niantic could be disproportionately targeting third party-tracking apps, as they are doing little to stop third-party bot apps that give players an unfair advantage. Currently, there are a several apps that use a web bot to play Pokemon GO in the background. Bots are not only able to catch Pokemon, hatch eggs, and travel to pokestops, but also they are able to adjust their GPS location to instantly travel anywhere in the world.

Although these bot apps clearly give game breaking advantages to its users, Niantic has never issued a statement condemning the use of these apps. At present, the only penalty for using these apps is that if Pokemon GO detects a player hopping around on GPS coordinates, the app might temporarily put a ban on an account.  This ban can last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, but since the bot is still active, it simply goes back to playing as soon as the ban expires, making the punishment effectively useless.

It is strange that Niantic has done so little to address these bot apps when they are so dedicated to punishing other forms of cheating, such as their recent crackdown on players who manipulated the game to get legendary pokemon. At this point, Niantic has done little to address these game breaking bot apps, but unless they want another group of users to start requesting refunds, they will need to figure out how to keep the game fair.

Is player criticism of Niantic’s latest update and shutdowns of third-party apps justified?

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Pokemon GO is out now for Android and iOS devices in select areas.

Source: VG 24/7