Niantic Sues Spoofing Software Over Harry Potter Wizards Unite

Over the years, there has been a number of court cases that have decided a wide variety of high-impact policies in the world of video games. 

There was a case where World of Warcraft successfully sued MDY Industries for creating bots that allowed users to mine gold and resources while they were at their day jobs. 

There's the time Apple agreed to pay out 32 million dollars to avoid a lawsuit over microtransactions. 

And now we can add to the list, the current war being waged against spoofers for games that use geolocation software, as business insider reports Niantic (Pokemon Go and Wizards Unite) is suing Global++, makers of spoofing software, in advance of the upcoming Wizards Unite global release.

In the preliminary injunction, Niantic mentions the following - 

"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."

The outcome of this case could have some large implications. To date, spoofers individually haven't been sued. They've been caught and banned by game developers (when detected), but there have been few if any cases where a game developer has actually brought a lawsuit against a spoofer (someone pretending to be in a different location than they actually are to gain advantages in a game with location-based rewards).

If this case goes Niantic's way, it could pave the way for more serious reprocussions against other app developers with spoofing software, or against individual spoofers themselves.

As an avid player of geolocation based games, I can say confidently that spoofing most certainly breaks in-game economies and makes a mess of things for players who do not do it, so I see where Niantic is coming from.

We'll keep you up to date as the suit presses forward.