Pokémon Go Player Levels Up Quickly Enough To Trigger Anti-Cheat Measures

Normally, leveling up in Pokémon Go can take a while. Finding, catching, and evolving Pokémon takes time, and most people only play the game for a few hours per day. One man decided he'd test his ability to quickly gain experience. and did so well the game thought he was a computer.

As Kotaku reports, Jimmy Derocher, a dedicated Pokémon Go player, has been attempting to gain as much experience as possible in the shortest amount of time. This weekend he attempted to gain one million experience points in a single day – no small feat. He found a cluster of ten Pokéstops, dropped lures in all of them with the help of his friends, and walked a loop for several hours, attempting to maximize his experience gain and reach his goal.

Unfortunately, Pokémon Go's programming got in his way. The game has algorithms in place to stop cheaters from using third-party bot programs to cheat and gain experience faster than humanly possible. After passing a certain threshold of experience gain, every Pokémon Derocher encountered began running away from him as part of a "soft-ban" anti-cheating measure.

Derocher saw the ban coming, asking Niantic's John Hanke via Twitter to whitelist him while he streamed and gave the proceeds to charity.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2016/08/21/pok-233-mon-go-player-levels-up-quickly-enough-to-trigger-anti-cheat-measures.aspx