Niantic files a lawsuit against cheaters
in General
Found an article on Markets Insider that talks about a lawsuit filed by Niantic against a group called Global ++. A group that makes a cracked version of the game that helps promote cheating in Ingress and Pokemon.
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At first I was a little fearful about the Streisand effect kicking in and giving that site more advertisement until someone pointed out that there will be a lot of info forced out during the discovery process. There is going to be a big ban hammer brought out and a ton of tears after that. It will be quite entertaining.
Yeah, this is good that they are going after the company. They've already moved the Ingress++ information from their website which seems odd since they left the pokemon go++ info. I'm not sure if that has to do with anything or just coincidence.
We'll be keeping up to date with the information as it pertains to Ingress at the academy:
This is great news, thank you for posting. This is going to make things very interesting.
I'm thrilled to hear this information. Cheating should not ever be tolerated.
I am surprised IITC with the script player tracker is not mentioned. Since iitc also calls their Intel changes tweaks.
@TheKluten , looks like this is more location spoofers.
Looks like Global++ has seized operations effective immediately. That's quite the win I'd say.
@Glenuendo Yes but any modification of app , loc or in this case a web site ( the intel one) should be equaly wrong ?
From my understanding, IITC by default requests intel data from the server at the same interval that the stock intel does. You can tweak this but IITC warns this can cause issues with your account.
@TheKluten , I don't necessarily disagree with that but it depends on the powers that be at Niantic as to where they draw the line.
Looks like they are shuttering their doors. I still hope there is discovery so that those that use this get hammered.
@TheKluten Global++ (from what I read, I could be wrong) were taking Niantic's intelectual property and making changes to the app. The source code for the apps that Niantic creates is not open source, so this is a violation of the licensing agreement that users agree to when using the app. IITC while technically against the game's TOS does not actually alter (to my knowledge, I admit that I have not investigated very much and am taking others word for this) Niantic's source code in any way.
good for niantic. it just sucks they have to waste time and money on it.
this is why we cant have nice things - all the time and energy niantic puts into having to chase down this stuff is why we are still waiting on whatever next feature in prime gets an update.
everyone who enables things like this ++ thing is responsible for slowing down the rollout of new features in prime.
Having the legal department fighting a lawsuit doesn't necessarily take away from developers implementing features. Dealing with the fallout of cheaters can take away from Niantic's community interaction, granted. But those developers will still be coding away, regardless.
https://www.scribd.com/document/413474548/Niantic-v-Global-Mot-for-PI
That was an interesting read @Glenuendo
@BunnyPrime , if they continue to develop, it will have to be somewhere further underground. Maybe they continue, maybe they don't. I have heard arguments both ways.
I wonder if the recent bans that have been coming out are due to this?
Highly doubt it.
@CriminalBizzy @TheKluten what the [insert expletive here] people at Global ++ did was to modify the actual Ingress/PokemonGO APK (legally Niantic's intellectual property) by adding a joystick to it. That is why Niantic had cause to sue them. IITC is a totally different animal as its developer wrote code that gets information from the normal Intel map and just displays it differently than the normal map, as well as have the capacity to look at various metrics on the area scanned and plan operations using the draw tools. The developer for IITC has specifically acknowledged that this could be considered a violation of TOS, but that he will immdeiately shut the software down if Niantic asks him to. I believe that since he 1) is not selling the app 2) he has stated he will shut it down if Niantic asks and 3) most players consider it to be a helpful add-on to the game that Niantic has to spend a sum total of zero dollars developing and maintaining that Niantic will ignore IITC.