"Spoofing is getting worse, and it's far past the time Niantic needs to do something about it."

#PokemonGO: I saw a post not too long ago ( http://bit.ly/2ESMVDX ) about spoofing and though "Yeah, that sucks, but at least it's not happening to my community to that extent." Unfortunately that no longer is true.I have been playing for over two years, and while spoofing has been an issue from time to time, I've never felt it was bad enough to get me to consider stopping playing the game. The past few days have had me reconsider that stance. There is a large PoGo community in my area with an active discord. For the longest time, there was only one person that everyone knew was a spoofer, but he only went after Pokemon, and is a well liked guy, so we all pretty much let it slide since it wasn't really affecting us. Fast forward a year, and this guy has never even received a warning from Niantic and is a lot more open about his spoofing than ever. Several months ago I learned that a very high profile player on his team was also spoofing to do raids, which she admitted to me privately on discord when I was trying to coordinate a raid once. To learn that such a high profile player was spoofing was very shocking because she openly used to criticize spoofers, but I guess the original spoofer in our community's brazenness without even a slap on the wrist from Niantic made her feel safe.​Finally, another two extremely high profile players from his team just started spoofing raids a few weeks ago, and decided not to even try hiding it. I heard that since the original spoofer has gotten away with it for so long, that his friends are finally giving in and doing it themselves. People physically at the raids make comments like "Wonder if they are actually here or spoofing again" at this point. Just a few days ago I noticed these players (who usually drop each other's accounts in, as well as a slew of alt accounts to fill up gyms) are now spoofing gym battles. They have been wiping out entire swaths of town at night and I have physically been at two now (where there is no place you could hide while still being in range of the gym) while their accounts dropped in with no one to be seen. I'm out there spending lots of my time and gas only to be kicked from about 8 gyms 20 minutes later because these guys are spoofing from their couch at home. When their main accounts hit 20 gyms they continue to clear gyms only placing their alt accounts in. Makes me not want to really play the game anymore. I can't compete with spoofers. I don't have time to constantly go back to gyms to take them back and don't want to waste gas if I know someone else can just boot me from their home.The report players for cheating feature is all but hidden. I'm pretty sure Niantic doesn't really want people to report others for cheating based on how hard it is to find this feature. I had to walk through the players in the primary chat I participate in so we could all report all the accounts of these two guys, but we don't really expect Niantic to do anything based on their track record. Half the people in my chat I'm sure didn't even bother reporting after I walked them through the process because it's such a pain in the butt to do.While discussing this issue I recently learned that one of the admins of our Facebook group/discord let someone spoof their account to make an EX raid. When even the admins of the community are spoofing, it seems like us legitimate players don't even have the backing from leadership to exclude the spoofers. We can try to make private raid lobbies but gymming is the big problem I'm seeing lately, and there's no defense against that except from Niantic. At least in my community, a large number of players have witnessed spoofers getting away with doing so, and that has seemingly made others feel safe to spoof without risking their accounts being banned. I can't say they are wrong about feeling safe to spoof based on what I have seen from Niantic so far.I've already handicapped myself enough by sticking to one account where most of my friends have two to four accounts that allow them to stack gyms or shave out their teammates when gyms are full, or to trade between their accounts. I have worked very very hard for my nearly 150 gold gyms. I am approaching 100 million XP. But when Niantic fails to take action on cheaters on one of the last areas in the game I feel I can make progress on (gymming), that doesn't leave me with much else to do. The last few times I've been motivated to go out and take some gyms I've thought twice due to the spoofer issue. I'll end up staying home more often than not if this continues, and with that I see my interest in the game waning.Niantic, please, I'm begging you. Start dealing with the cheaters. I know they are making you money, but at some point you will lose money from the legitimate players being turned off from all the cheating. via /r/pokemongo http://bit.ly/2MrAaXn