Over the past few days, there has been a lot of cheatin' going on, including a player that has utilized an exploit to move up all the way to first place in the GO Battle League, which has led to the suspension of the Pokemon Go Battle League until Niantic has fixed the issue.
As outlined extensively in this Reddit thread on /r/TheSilphRoad, "Some high ranked players posted video evidence of losing battles to a player who was able to fire charge moves extremely quickly." Players were able to use the Pokemon Melmetal's Thunder Shock to create 180 energy, but were also able to sneak in "tired off" charge moves such as Rock Slide (in a number that cost about 360 energy) before the other player can react. This was demonstrated in multiple videos where the player without Melmetal is unable to react, getting attacked multiple times in one turn.
On June 12 Niantic issued a statement, which is posted below:
Trainers, we want to comment on the various “exploit” posts from the past two days and the underlying situation.
As a team, we believe there is a “contract of trust” in GO Battle League: you should always feel your knowledge and skill determine the outcome of your battles. Cheating directly attacks this trust contract, and we have zero tolerance for it.
Because of this zero tolerance policy and the current situation, we’ve disabled GO Battle League.
We’re equally serious about our policy of never commenting on the details of investigations into individual accounts. Here’s what we can share.
When a possible exploit is identified, we follow this process:
Analyze the issue - Data analysis is the most important work we do during this process. Rash action (i.e. no analysis) can solve the immediate issue; however, it leaves the door open for the exploit to return in the future.
Determine severity - Based on our analyses, we determine (a) the level of technical knowledge needed to abuse the exploit and (b) how badly the exploit harms the integrity of GO Battle League.
Mitigate accordingly
Based on the above outlined steps, the disabling of GO Battle League means we’ve arrived at the “mitigation” step of our process for the current situation. There is plenty of work happening behind the scenes, and we’ll re-enable GO Battle League once we’re confident the “trust contract” will be honored.
A player hit rank one using this cheat, and has since been banned. If you are interested in reading more information from high-level players, be sure to check out the Reddit thread.
What do you think of this news? Do you still play Pokemon Go? Have you ever played the GO Battle League? Let us know in the comments!
