The global launch of Harry Potter Wizards Unite, Niantic's next major mobile game, is fast approaching.
What should have been a celebration is tempered by news that the firm is suing Global++, a group accused of being the main distributor of third-party applications designed to cheat in geolocation-based games.
However, this war seems to have lasted barely a handful of hours, as the founders of Global++ bowed out of Discord and explained that they would "close their services, in accordance with this legal obligation."
There are different names to identify the practice challenged by Niantic in the lawsuit — Fly, spoofing or fake GPS — but the principle remains the same.
These practices allow the avatar to move on the map without the user actually having to walk 'for real'.
Applications such as those offered by Global++ were very quickly labelled cheating, since they make it possible to collect rare Pokémon specific to certain regions, for example.
They also hadn't been on Niantic's radar, and banning accounts that used this type of cheating was rare. Players caught cheating were barely even scolded.
Those whom Niantic calls 'an association of hackers' are accused specifically of intellectual property infringement.
These third-party applications, called PokéGo++ or Ingress++ for example, reuse the code of the original game, in addition to going against its rules and principles.
Global++ rejected the label of 'hackers', and simply explain that it made tweaks and minimal changes to the code.
Either way, Niantic are supported by Warner Bros. — who are seemingly determined to bring down propagators of 'fake GPS'.
While a Harry Potter: Wizards Unite event will be held in the United States on June 18, Niantic's lawyers had marked their determination to protect the future of the game, as well as its impending release.
"Niantic files this motion on the eve of the United States launch of Harry Potter, the culmination of a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment by Niantic, the success of which is threatened by defendants' unlawful conduct," they explained.
Niantic has announced the end of Apple Watch compatibility for Pokémon GO. This is due to a redundancy with the Exploration Tracking feature.
