Game developers, why so little effort?

[exporious]

So, I've been playing various forms of games for lets just say.... a few years now... including old school Perl city web based games...

Yes, I'm hypocritical because I have used said exploits in various games once I've been aware of them existing (or making them myself where they're not), but the end result is always the same without question, cheats and exploits WILL eventually ruin the game and bring it to a quicker death than without.

Every single game has had cheaters, hackers etc, obviously when there is a will there is a way, however, one thing I've never understood, sure it's possible to hack a game, BUT as a developer why do none of these companies invest resources into tracking exploiters and actually putting a good anti cheat system in place.

While it is obviously on their mind to "fix" the exploits, why do they suffer so badly on being worried about banning people quicker, this game for example, no human can get 100k+ constantly, I refuse to believe that they can't with minimal effort identify basically every mass cheater and ban them, they could make a huge media story about how awesome they are in quickly jumping on to stopping cheaters. (I'm well aware of the vast amounts of data they're dealing with, and the complexity it brigns along with it)

If I was Joe public and finding gyms all over that had enemy I had little to no chance to beat and I was doing everything manually, I'd get bored and fed up pretty quickly and quit, that has to hurt Niantic pretty soon.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and cheats don't hurt and kill the game as much as I think, and really what kills it is the userbase just moving on

[Tjapp]

thats why ALL should cheat/exploit and bot, to make the game fair.

[Actaeon]

I mean.. They kinda are. They've been sending C&Ds to many third-party developers and have just recently changed the API of the game, effectively breaking all the current bots in existence. On top of that, they're a relatively small company that's had to deal with the release of one of the most popular games to ever have been made (80 million people in 2 months). They have a lot of stuff to work on.

It's not that easy to find and ban every cheater, especially when they're hell-bent on finding other ways to cheat. WoW has been popular for what-11 years now? The botting community is still going strong, and Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company. Niantic has just barely started.

[exporious]

I mean.. They kinda are. They've been sending C&Ds to many third-party developers and have just recently changed the API of the game, effectively breaking all the current bots in existence. On top of that, they're a relatively small company that's had to deal with the release of one of the most popular games to ever have been made (80 million people in 2 months). They have a lot of stuff to work on.

It's not that easy to find and ban every cheater, especially when they're hell-bent on finding other ways to cheat. WoW has been popular for what-11 years now? The botting community is still going strong, and Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company. Niantic has just barely started.

Yeah, the question was generic to any game I guess, I just find it weird that the companies are so worried to ban stick people, its nothing new, it's happened since the dawn of time, it seems you need more proof to ban a gamer than to put a criminal in prison (weird comparison I know)