Pokemon GO: Location spoofing on the rise, but still no Rooted/Jailbroken users allowed?

When Pokemon GO first became available on the Play store, I jumped on and downloaded it. I used to play Niantic's prior augmented reality game, Ingress, so I had high hopes for Pokemon.

Quick description if you're unfamiliar with Ingress. It's an augmented reality game where you hunt down interdimensional portals that exude strange energy from some alien world. It has inspired public art and placement of public service buildings (hence portals/stops being at these places). Like Poke-stops, you access these portals to get items. You also choose your faction and decide if this alien force is only beneficial or if they're biding their time until they can control us. Then you mod the portals to either encourage the energy to build and flow or block the alien ingression/invasion before it's too late. Kind of like playing a conspiracy theory game. All the original Poke-stops were portals in Ingress.

But then it all came to an end when Niantic decided they would block all rooted android users and jailbroken iphone users from playing at all. There was so much cheating going on, that they had to do something to control it. And thanks to a security API that Google had implemented in android, it is very easy for apps to tell if the device is rooted. Niantic used this API to check for root status (and possibly even unlocked bootloaders, but I'm not certain).

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Quick description of root. To get yourself administrative access to your device so you can make whatever changes you would like, such as new themes, remove bloatware, install custom ROMs, and so on.

It was an understandable move. Irritating for me being a rooted android user, but understandable. Or so it seemed at the time. Since then, many short-lived successful attempts were made to circumnavigate this check, and Niantic rather quickly shut them down. Petitions were even made to reopen access because most root users aren't in it to be illegal. It is helpful to have a rooted device if you develop apps, you know, like Pokemon GO for example.

So I, like many rooted users, just stopped playing. Pokemon GO lost a large number of people that day. It was hard, but I'd rather have my root than the game honestly.

Fast forward to today. Many methods came and went, and I never felt like putting forth the effort on questionable processes with way too many steps just so I could play a game. Meanwhile, the ability to spoof your location in the game went largely unhindered in that time, and now anyone can download an app that can put you where ever you want and give you joystick controls so you can move around. This, of course, is anathema to the purpose behind the "get outside and have fun finding Pokemon" game. And it's my understanding that location spoofing was the reason root was blocked in the first place. So that clearly cannot be the case, so why is root still blocked?

I've given them money so I could get some items, so I've helped support the company. And I'm not the only one. I don't know how much of their early income was from rooted users, but I'm sure they took a major loss from it. And I have to wonder how much more income they'd have now if they didn't block us all.

I even spread the word about the game to many people, some of whom still play today. And one of those people even uses a location spoof app, which is kind of ironic and brings our story full circle.

So there's my rant for the day.