Cheating is becoming an increasingly common problem in Pokemon Go.

To understand cheating in Pokemon Go, we must dive into the reasons why a person would be tempted to break the rules outlined by Niantic in the Terms of Services. First let's take a look at what is mentioned under the Cheating section of the Trainer Guidelines.

Cheating. Don’t do it. Play fair. Pokémon GO is meant to be played on a mobile device and get you outside to explore your world! Methods of cheating, unfortunately, are limited only by cheaters’ imaginations, but include at a minimum the following: using modified or unofficial software; playing with multiple accounts (one account per player, please); sharing accounts; using tools or techniques to alter or falsify your location; or selling/trading accounts.

After extensive review of the AR games produced by Niantic, I have concluded that the primary reason people cheat in these games is as follows:

1. To gain a competitive advantage – Players cheat to have an advantage over other players in the game. In this case players break rules so that they are better than others playing the game. This ultimately is driven by a desire to show off or just to appease those who are more competitive by nature and need to be the best by any means necessary.
2. To show off to other players – A player wants to have the highest IV Pokemon, or be the first to unlock the new Pokemon in their pokedex.
3. To save time – Players cheat to save time. They are in a hurry to do more in the game with less time, and in order to accomplish this they start doing things that reduce the time required for them to commit to the game.
4. Boredom with the current game – The game has grown stale to those who have put in many hours with lack of updates. Some players complete the in game activities and with no new Pokemon, they find other ways to entertain themselves.
5. Flaws in the core game mechanics – Aspects of the game are too difficult for casual players, or perhaps even impossible in certain areas. In many cases Niantic has made specific game mechanics that result in negative consequences.

Now that we've gone over a few of the main reasons people go outside of the Terms of Service, lets take a look at exactly what some players are doing to break the rules.

Sharing Accounts

This is probably the most forgiving rule that is broken. This can start innocently enough like a husband letting his wife take his phone to catch a rare spawn down the street. Or maybe letting a sibling take your phone and battle at the raid so you don't have to leave the house. What can start as something you do every once in a while, it easily becomes habit forming.

As players lose interest, and their accounts site idle; Their friends could be tempted to use these higher level accounts on a second device and to begin multi-accounting in order to enhance their game play.

In addition active players have started letting friends who travel overseas log in to catch the regional Pokemon. This is a problem that Niantic has brought upon themselves unfortunately. Releasing regional Pokemon without giving players any ability to trade made cheating the only way to fill your Pokedex without spending thousands of dollars. While many people find a way to justify this; Doing so essentially breaks most of the rules outlined in the ToS at once.

So why is this a bad thing exactly? Right now unless you are more than casually sharing there isn't much of an issue here. However when players actively see one person using more than one device it can give the impression that this is perfectly acceptable. In addition when trading and PvP are eventually introduced, this could give players a competitive advantage. If account sharing is done in excess this leads to our next broken rule.

Multiple Accounts (Alts)

Players who start innocently enough playing for their friends can find themselves falling deeper down the rabbit hole. You start doing it once or twice, then the next thing you know your buddy quits playing, and no reason for that level 32 to collect dust, amirite?

Players typically do this to save time or to gain a competitive advantage over the other players in the area. They may not even realize that they are gaining a competitive advantage at the expense of players who are not breaking the rules, but that is precisely what happens. Let us go into some of the reasons people break this rules, and the repercussions for everyone involved.

Quicker Gym Battles - Players who use more than one account at a time save time by battling gyms with more than one Pokemon. This can easily cut the time it takes them to defeat a gym in half. In addition it is incredibly common for these same players to place a Pokemon at the gym from each account they have. Doing so can easily double the time it takes for another player on the other teams to battle and defeat the gym. In addition it reduces the available slots available on the gym, possibly leaving your own teammates with no place to leave their Pokemon. As this activity increases and Pokemon become stronger, it takes longer for legitimate players to take over gyms, and harder for them to defend those gyms.

Raid Perks - On occasions raids spawn in areas where there are not enough people available to complete them. In many cases alternate accounts are used as a means to be ensure a team can defeat the Raid boss without risk of wasting a raid pass. To be fair, some raids wouldn't even get off the ground if it wasn't for these people using their extra accounts. These alts use a slot in the Raid, but as it is rare for 20 people to show up at a single raid, this becomes a mute point. The number of balls a player gets for beating a raid may also be affected by alts by boosting the numbers for a specific team in battle, this can lead to an unfair advantage, but one I have not heard too many complaints about. It is interesting to note that if there are enough players, alts are generally still used but no one seems to complain because it helps them take the boss down faster.

EX Passes – By using multiple accounts players are ensuring that they have more opportunities to receive EX raid passes. If these EX Raids give Pokemon that are extremely rare, the thought would be that eventually you might be able trade these Pokemon from your alternate account to your main account. The current way EX passes are being dispersed is still a mystery, but there is a possibility that having these extra accounts battling at the raids could both help and hurt other players involved. It could be helpful by ensuring enough people battle at the Raids to initiate the distribution of the EX pass. However it could also hurt by reducing the odds of legitimate players who receive the passes. Basically the biggest issue with this is that players are actively watching alts get EX Passes while they still haven't received one. This can be extremely frustrating to some players.

Extra Lures - While this method is probably the least likely reason someone would use multiple accounts, its definitely worth mentioning. When a player levels up they unlock free items on their account such as incubators and lures. Currently the Lure module is something that you can use that benefits others playing in the area. We will likely not see new items like Lures again in the future because they are an extra incentive to use multiple accounts.

Boredom and Burnout – This occurs when hardcore players get bored of the current game and instead of quitting or taking a break, they decide to start over on a new account. This in itself should not be an issue, but it may become a problem when the player actively plays both accounts at the same time.

Trading Preparation– This is probably by far the underlying reason why a majority of people who play multiple accounts do so. The assumption is that Niantic will eventually allow us to trade Pokemon, so all these great Pokemon they have been tireless collecting on multiple accounts will eventually be consolidated into their primary account. I can see why people might be tempted by this, however there is a crucial flaw in this line of thinking. It is based on the assumption that Niantic will let us trade Pokemon as they are. While no one knows how this feature could be implemented; it is extremely likely that if trading is ever implemented, the Pokemon will receive completely new stats upon trade. This is the only way that they can reduce the huge incentive for people to use multiple accounts to upset the balance of the game.

So, what exactly is to be done about the increasing usage of multiple accounts?
At a glance, there isn't any easy way for Niantic to automatically detect multiple accounts without also identifying many false positives. Their best route of detection would be to target accounts using the same IP address. This creates a problem however, because many people share wireless internet access and those connected through large Wi-Fi networks would also set off this false positive. This means Niantic can't easily detect people using multiple accounts. Instead they rely almost completely on players making inappropriate game play reports against other players. The way Niantic handles accounts that have been reported is still somewhat of a mystery, but it is assumed that once they have more than one report, Niantic will start an investigation into the activity of the reported accounts; banning those that have broken the rules.

So why don't we just report players who we see with more than one device?
Most people get very little enjoyment out of snitching on people. Also, at the moment, what incentive do they really have? While this may eliminate some of the players in the area that are breaking the rules and altering the dynamics of gym battles... at what cost? We risk losing many of the high level players who we need in order to take down high level raid bosses.

Couldn't Niantic do more?
Yes. But you also have to ask, what incentive do they have to ban their player base? They need active players to show that their game is still popular. This increases their ability to make partnerships with sponsors. Additionally some of these people playing on multiple accounts spend money on multiple accounts. Both of these increase Niantics bottom line. It has been shown with both Ingress and Pokemon Go that Niantic will only actively enforce these rules if there is overwhelming public player outrage.

Spoofers

Many players would agree that spoofers are our least favorite. They can do everything in the game without spending a dime or getting off the couch. In the early days of PoGo they ruined gym battles, forcing Niantic to spend months rewriting the gym mechanics. These days spoofers are far less noticeable than before and unless they interact with a gym, they are undetectable by players. Yet they can obtain high level Pokemon with ease. Additionally when they do interact with gyms, this gives them a superior advantage over almost all other players.

It is likely that trading will not exist in Pokemon Go until the spoofing problem is resolved. This will be possible in the future by limiting access to the game client to only the newest versions of iOS and Android. As new OS's distinguish between real and false GPS locations, this will force all the people who spoof out of the game. This is coming, but will take some time due to the large number of outdated Android phones. Apple users can expect one such change to happen at the end of February, which has already been announced by Niantic. They will eventually start eliminating older version of Android as well. Regardless we should expect at least 12 months before trading is introduced.

If you have used your account to spoof and not been careful about your actions, it is very likely that Niantic has already flagged your account for spoofing. Every in game action is logged, and at any time they can review your account to look for odd behavior.

Data Scraping aka Pokemon Maps

Players aren't supposed to use any sort of mapping applications to locate Pokemon except for Pokemon Go itself. Nearly all sites that display real time map data of Gym status or Pokemon spawn locations are against ToS. Many would argue, even myself at times, that this just makes the game more fun, by allowing you to locate Pokemon with ease, and then go directly to their location. However this too gives an unfair advantage for future gameplay by allowing players to build their Pokemon inventories up quicker than a typical casual player who has to search for their Pokemon.

It is worth noting that all of the real time scrapers and Pokemon maps are created by spoofing bots, and as a result the maps will disappear as Niantic cracks down on spoofing.

Summary

Most of the problems that exist with cheating in Pokemon Go are by Niantic's own design, or lack-there-of. Alternate accounts becoming regular is a sign of many things, but mostly that the game is missing something for the hardcore players. I don't think there would be so many people playing outside the rules if this wasn't the case. While every game is going to have a small percentage of players that break the game rules; The lack of communication from Niantic as well as a lack of enforcement of the rules lead to larger groups of the community breaking the trainer guidelines.

What has become quite clear to me is that everyone has their own individual set of trainer guidelines. Rules they are or aren't willing to break in order to enhance their own game experience. However too often I think people fail to see how the actions they take could be effecting other people who play in their immediate area.

It might bother me more than most because I've personally seen first hand seen how these sort of things have all but destroyed the Niantic Ingress community.