Hacked Pokemon in Pokemon Go are now Marked and Misbehave

Pokemon Go is still up and kicking, you may be aware. Niantic’s titanic mobile title recently got a pretty big update, in fact, which makes fighting for gyms a lot easier, while holding gyms became a lot harder. Plus, there are now new meta-tough “raid” pokemon that you can tackle with up to 20 other people, and if you all manage to get it low enough in under a minute, you’ll be able to try to capture it.

But that’s not all. While Niantic might not have a GTA 5 level of cheaters and hackers to contend with, there’s no shortage of people who want to bolster their digital army of Pokemon through any means necessary. And Niantic is finally putting their foot down and saying “no more”.

Over Reddit, an official Niantic support account had this to say:

With the announcement of Raid Battles and the new battle features, we are staying true on our commitment to ensuring that Pokémon GO continues to be a fun and fair experience for all Trainers. Starting today, Pokémon caught using third-party services that circumvent normal gameplay will appear marked with a slash in the inventory and may not behave as expected. We are humbled by the excitement for all the new features we announced yesterday. This is one small part of our continued commitment to maintaining the integrity of our community and delivering an amazing Pokémon GO experience.

Since making the announcement, people have noticed these “slashes” appearing on ill-gotten pokemon, marking them as fake. However, no one is quite sure what they mean by “misbehave”. Current tests have shown that they’re no longer worth any candy if you trade them in, but that’s pretty much it. And heck, once you evolve them, the mark seems to go away on its own, which might be an oversight.

But if it’s anything like the games, where these pokemon don’t obey orders in the middle of a fight, then I could see why this might be a big problem for their owners.

A pretty cool feature, I guess. I’m always a fan of punishing pirates and hackers in funny, ironic ways, rather than just with a standard ban, so I like that, but I wish I knew more. Not like I have fake pokemon of my own I need to worry about, I mean... I'm just curious for a friend.