In a private Discord server, a member of Pokemon Go’s development team said they’re aware of a glitch dubbed “micro GPS drift” and warned community ambassador leaders that players within their communities will be flagged by the game’s anti-cheat systems moving forward.

Micro GPS drift refers to players toggling their phone’s GPS signal off and on or switching out of the app and back into the game, which allows players to participate in a raid battle from slightly beyond the gym’s interaction radius with a free daily raid pass or a premium battle pass instead of a more expensive remote raid pass.

The behavior momentarily places a player’s character slightly outside of their true location and takes advantage of a GPS “race condition,” the developers argue.

Although it might’ve been a well-kept secret for some, the glitch has been in the game for over a year and is known by many players. It’s confusing — and somewhat disturbing — as to why the glitch is just now being considered a violation of the game’s terms of service when there are bigger fish to fry.

On the surface, it seems reasonable why the development team would want to ban and/or suspend players who are essentially exploiting the game. But it’s also a bit of a gray area since GPS drifting occurs naturally due to technical service issues.

It’s concerning to a lot of players that they might have their Pokemon Go accounts flagged by accident and be banned for something beyond their control.

Those concerns are justified, in my opinion.

It was only a few weeks ago when my in-game friend, Billy Lutz, a sponsored Pokemon Go content creator known as The Trainer Club, received a seven-day temporary ban for GPS spoofing, even though he didn’t cheat and has never spoofed or modified his device.

He was flying to Oregon from the in-person Jersey City Go Fest event and managed to use Delta airline’s WiFi to log into his account. He wasn’t able to catch Pokemon, but he was able to perform item bag and Pokemon storage maintenance from thousands of feet in the air.

Through having an internet connection, his phone’s GPS signal reportedly made his account travel 50,000 kilometers in one second. Somehow, that triggered the anti-cheat system to flag his account as having used a third-party client software to cheat the game.

Lutz, who has a relationship with the game’s developers, sent his travel itinerary to them and explained the situation, but the issue was left unresolved. He couldn’t access his friend’s list or find any wild Pokemon, outside of those spawning from an incense, until the ban expired.

Lutz’s situation was clearly a false positive detection by the game’s system, and even he wasn’t able to resolve the situation with the game’s developers.

Spoofing, manipulating your device’s location data to appear as though you’re in a different geographical location than your actual physical location, is a legitimate issue in the game.

By playing Pokemon Go with others in Altoona, I’ve heard several testimonies of trainers who cannot keep their Pokemon in gyms for long because of people spoofing and knocking them out, almost instantly.

The developers should focus their efforts on banning people who spoof before worrying about someone trying to cut corners just to reach a raid battle from only a few extra feet away.

They should also step up and fix the glitch themselves instead of fearmongering players who are purchasing raid passes with their hard-earned money.

My hope is that the warning was simply a tactic to defer people from cheating. If the developers act on their words and start banning people left and right, a lot of people could outright quit the game.

Honestly, I wouldn’t blame them.

As players, I think we should try to prevent GPS drift as much as we can.

I don’t condone using the glitch as players might begin to face the consequences of their actions if they choose to do so. I also wouldn’t recommend closing the app to check your text messages or conduct other business while you’re waiting for a raid lobby to fill up, as that could trigger GPS drift.

However, I hope the developers understand that players will unintentionally GPS drift and be lenient in their terms of service enforcement until the glitch is removed from the game.

Perhaps the solution to everyone’s problems would be to expand the interaction radius around gyms so people don’t have to exploit a glitch to enjoy the game.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520 and mchurella@altoonamirror.com