Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go, has confessed that a recent wave of spoofing punishment, consisting of strikes and outright bans were doled out to players mistakenly.

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The Niantic Support account in Twitter wrote the past Month that they are working on returning strikes for some trainers who mistakenly received punishment in their accounts. “This will be done for trainers automatically, whether or not they have contacted us. We apologise for the error,” wrote the Niantic Support account. These Pokemon GO strikes escalated via three stages, first starting with a seven day warning and then moving to a 30-day account freeze and in the end a permanent ban from the popular mobile game, according to Eurogamer.

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It seems that somehow this game’s anti-cheat system was tripped and many players were mistakenly banned.
From the last few weeks, unofficial Pokemon Go Subreddit has been receiving complaints from the users affected by the error.
No indication of compensation has been made by Niantic for these innocent players. Many of them will not be able for this year’s ultimately anticlimactic Pokemon Go Fest. 

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Since the game’s release in the year 2016, Niantic have tried to crack down on groups known as “spoofers” who trick the mobile game by using third-party software.Niantic announced this year that it had banned more than 5 million cheaters since 2020.
Niantic wrote at the time, ” We are committed to ensuring fair gameplay across the game portfolio.” “Everyday, new forms of cheating/spoofing tools are available on the internet and we are continuously working to combat these cheaters.”
In the past five years, Pokemon Go has made Niantic over $ 4 billion.