[heh]

This all doesn't really matter when you lock out anyone who has a rooted phone, with no warning. Sure, a few people were cheating with them, but anyone running cyanogenmod or any other custom firmware, or anyone who wants to get rid of a god-awful OEM skin, is now screwed out of the game. Ironically, this hasn't stopped the actual cheaters or people using AutoMagisk.

[lucb1e]

Wait, they did that? That's like blocking anyone from playing any games when they have the administrator password to their computers. Being very pro-rooting (for independence reasons, how do you "own" a device that you don't have access to?) this is a good reason to boycott the game on any phone.

[makomk]

Yeah, they did that using a very aggressive Google-provided tool called SafetyNet designed exactly for that purpose, which downloads a program from Google's servers and runs it with system-level privileges to do the checks.

[heh]

Incidentally, as I understand it SafetyNet is intended for verification of device integrity when you use Google Pay - i.e. as a NFC wallet.

[puddintane]

The method could be circumvented using Xposed + Magisk modules on android (I believe iOS had a method as well).

However this is all irrelevant considering they spent a month or two deciding to ban these devices and it only took 3 weeks for new scanner apps to pop up that potentially will never be brought down [1] the owner claims they will never be taken down now in his posts which makes me wonder if he is balance loading thousands of accounts to prevent Niantic from banning his application from working - which really it was bound to happen eventually just needed the time for some to write out the necessary code and figure out a quick way to authorize and potentially keep creating accounts.

In all honesty I believe the ban on rooted/jailbroken devices was really to remove people who were not contributing as much money to the game. In my experience a rooted device usually signifies the user wants to pay less for/in apps.

Of course many users need rooting for backing up, tweaking the interface for better performance, but in the end most rooted users did this method to install hacked apps or circumvent some restriction that they would normally have to pay for (such as wifi tethering).

It is silly and I am more then just frustrated that I had to spend hours getting Magisk installed to keep playing but in the end they are a business and the main focus is making money.

[1] https://fastpokemap.se/

edit Apologies I must have read over you mentioning the Magisk method!

edit2 also I have a lot of friends who bought phone's pre-rooted so it goes to say it's not really a smart maneuver on Niantics part to just assume people are rooting devices purposely.

[Kenji]

As a paying customer of pokemon go, I find it completely unacceptable that I am unable to login with no notice and have to find this out over a hackernews comment at the bottom of the page. I think it is fraud to block the rooted device of a paying customer who always played by the rules.

Eh, it's too much of a pain to hide my root. I'll never play this game again.

[ben_jones]

This seems like a valid complaint that I was completely unaware of until GP posted it. Why is it being downvoted?