'Pokémon Go' Accounts Get Unbanned: Niantic Believes In A Second Chance

Pokémon Go is the most popular mobile game in U.S. history, but Niantic Labs' experience has been anything but smooth. Unauthorized third-party services, like the infamous PokéVision, have wreaked havoc to the servers and prompted the company to ban Pokémon Go that use the third-party apps.

"Some players may not have realized that some add-on map apps do more than just show you nearby Pokémon," said Niantic CEO John Hanke in a blog post. As Niantic stated, apps that tap its servers for Pokémon Go data violate terms of service and its effects are very similar to a DDoS attack to its servers. Players that are also heavy users of the third-party apps are banned as well.

"Because of this we have had to ban some accounts associated with using these add-on map tools, leading to confusion by some users about why they were banned," said Hanke. "As a result of some changes made to our infrastructure, we are now able to unban this set of accounts."

While Niantic Labs believes in second chances, accounts eligible for an unban are only limited to players that used map apps. Deceitful players that used third-party apps to "remotely capture Pokémon, battle or deploy on Gyms, or harvest resources from PokéStops" are excluded from the list. Niantic will permanently ban all accounts caught cheating.