Android Bans and Automation apps

[DreVla]

I see there has been a wave of bans that people are currently complaining about for being unfair. It is important to understand that how the game operates on Android is different compared to how it works on PC and certain apps you might have installed can indeed trigger the client tampering even if not used at all. The reason for this is the permissions granted to the apps and their access to the Android OS.

I see people's frustration about this update and I wanted to help a little by compiling a list of apps that might trigger the client tampering but I do need your help. The first apps that come into mind are automation apps often used for Android like

- Automate

- Tasker

- Macrodroid

- AnyDesk app as reported here by @richi
- Certain built-in app on certain brands (Like game launchers, swipe to split etc.)

- Playing the game in a split screen on Android device (I could not test this, hopefully someone can confirm it)

 

I have not tested first three apps to see if they trigger the tampering warning, but I specifically chose these apps due to their popularity and imense number of permissions they require in order to be used. I believe compiling a list of such apps would help certain users to identify the reason that triggered the client tampering warning and from there on do what they believe it's best.

 

For obvious reasons, auto clickers will not be included in this list.

 

LE1: Thanks to @Raichuforyou for providing more details about these two accessibility services required by AnyDesk that might trigger the tampering:

Edited October 24, 2023 by DreVla

[Vertania]

My phone has a built-in "swipe to split" app that was apparently causing a false positive. Haven't even used the feature in over a year, but I guess having it enabled was enough to trigger this new tAmPeRiNg detection that is supposedly "working as intended."

 

The bigger issue here is the communication from the developers and how they're handling this obviously faulty auto-detection system. They didn't communicate this clearly before handing out ban warnings, they're blatantly ignoring feedback from the users, they're shutting down discussion of it by locking posts that bring it up, and they just keep reposting the same tone deaf message every time.

[Poufilou]

25 minutes ago, Vertania said:

My phone has a built-in "swipe to split" app that was apparently causing a false positive. Haven't even used the feature in over a year, but I guess having it enabled was enough to trigger this new tAmPeRiNg detection that is supposedly "working as intended."

 

The bigger issue here is the communication from the developers and how they're handling this obviously faulty auto-detection system. They didn't communicate this clearly before handing out ban warnings, they're blatantly ignoring feedback from the users, they're shutting down discussion of it by locking posts that bring it up, and they just keep reposting the same tone deaf message every time.

Seems unfair to say that if the support indeed resolved your issue, that's what its there for no ? 

 

It seems to me that staff got instructed to lead all players to the support feedback to resolve individual cases where devs look at what's happening. What else do you want from them ? There's no perfect auto-detection system anyways that's why support exists. 

[Vertania]

6 minutes ago, Poufilou said:

Seems unfair to say that if the support indeed resolved your issue, that's what its there for no ? 

 

It seems to me that staff got instructed to lead all players to the support feedback to resolve individual cases where devs look at what's happening. What else do you want from them ? There's no perfect auto-detection system anyways that's why support exists. 

They didn't resolve it, though. Like I said in my post, they just reposted the same message they keep dropping in the forums when they lock posts about it.

 

When you follow that link, it tells you to "Turn off or uninstall any autoclickers, macroing software, or ad skippers you're using." The built-in app that caused the false positive is not any of those and frankly I shouldn't have to disable one of my phones built-in features like that just to play this game.

 

On top of that, I certainly didn't appreciate having to come to this forum for help only to see users and mods (not you, but others) insinuating that I and everyone else were just lying about using cheats because one guy yesterday admitted to lying.

[Poufilou]

9 minutes ago, Vertania said:

They didn't resolve it, though. Like I said in my post, they just reposted the same message they keep dropping in the forums when they lock posts about it.

 

When you follow that link, it tells you to "Turn off or uninstall any autoclickers, macroing software, or ad skippers you're using." The built-in app that caused the false positive is not any of those and frankly I shouldn't have to disable one of my phones built-in features like that just to play this game.

 

On top of that, I certainly didn't appreciate having to come to this forum for help only to see users and mods (not you, but others) insinuating that I and everyone else were just lying about using cheats because one guy yesterday admitted to lying.

Well thanks to you they know one more thing that their system wrongly flags, hope it helps other players in your case getting unbanned and that they improve the system in future update. What did it cost, 2 or 3 days of you not being able to play on your phone ? I understand the frustration at other players insinuating stuff but it doesn't seem a reason to me to blame it on the devs work. 

[Seth]

16 minutes ago, Vertania said:

They didn't resolve it, though. Like I said in my post, they just reposted the same message they keep dropping in the forums when they lock posts about it.

 

When you follow that link, it tells you to "Turn off or uninstall any autoclickers, macroing software, or ad skippers you're using." The built-in app that caused the false positive is not any of those and frankly I shouldn't have to disable one of my phones built-in features like that just to play this game.

 

On top of that, I certainly didn't appreciate having to come to this forum for help only to see users and mods (not you, but others) insinuating that I and everyone else were just lying about using cheats because one guy yesterday admitted to lying.

Lemme know if you have any experience in the developers/IT business but from what I hear from close ones in the business in real life the systems are rarely perfect at first launch. Systems need to be launched to have end users test it to get feedback to adjust it, and a bot testing program is of course not going to be announced to the public beforehand to literally give the botters a upper hand by handing out a warning to the many botters this game sadly have. False positives can get help via support as Poufi mentions in this thread. I know the people in the support team and I am 100% sure that they gather all the helpful information and share with developer team to improve the system. They are great people who want to do a great effort.

 

Epecting such things to work 100% perfectly from start in a free game with this size of playerbase and small developer team is delusional. 

[Vertania]

19 minutes ago, Poufilou said:

I understand the frustration at other players insinuating stuff but it doesn't seem a reason to me to blame it on the devs work. 

Again, as I said in my first reply in this post, it's more about the devs/mods handling of the problem and their communication than their work. When you're getting multiple posts about the same issue each day, it should be clear that continuing to shut down discussion with the same "copy, paste, lock the post" response isn't cutting it.

 

Edit: Same thing to your reply, Seth. Nobody is expecting it to be 100% from the start, but expecting the staff to be receptive to feedback instead of sweeping it under the rug shouldn't be a "delusional" stance.

 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Vertania

[Poufilou]

10 minutes ago, Vertania said:

Again, as I said in my first reply in this post, it's more about the devs/mods handling of the problem and their communication than their work. When you're getting 10+ posts about the same issue each day, it should be clear that continuing to shut down discussion with the same "copy, paste, lock the post" response isn't cutting it.

 

Edit: Same thing to your reply, Seth. Nobody is expecting it to be 100% from the start, but expecting the staff to be receptive to feedback instead of sweeping it under the rug shouldn't be a "delusional" stance.

 

The copy paste thing is from staff, which are not qualified to give people an answer about what could possibly be going on, they just direct to those who can, in the appropriate place (not general forums). 

 

Usually they answer your issue personally through support ticket once it is resolved. If you do not communicate your issue they will never look at it. 

 

No one in their right mind will agree that they are good with communication but here it's just that players also need to help in the effort, which seem OK to manage, touching grass for a day or two never hurts. 

[Seth]

6 minutes ago, Poufilou said:

touching grass for a day or two never hurts. 

Too high expectations and too much pressure 😞

 

Spoiler

 

[Teddiursa]

The staff members were indeed instructed by us to lead players to our articles about Client Tampering:

https://support.pokemmo.com/knowledgebase/article/tampering-ban

https://support.pokemmo.com/knowledgebase/article/tampering-ban-as

 

It is not reasonable to expect us to investigate every single case individually whenever people make a complaint on forum or support, since most of them will be resolved by these 2 articles.

As Desu said on the thread below, players have been able to resolve the issue by following them, in which is also mentioned that if the issue is not resolved after following all steps, they should contact our support. This is so we can check for false positives.

I have been working myself on this since the update and I watched closely the other staff members answering these complaints and dealing with this situation. They did everything correctly as they were instructed, and they have been working hard and putting a lot of effort into answering as many people as they can. You cannot expect them to give you answers that only developers can, and the appropriate place to discuss issues that are not resolved with these articles is, as we mentioned, in our support. There is where it's possible for us to check individual cases and investigate more when needed.

 

4 hours ago, Vertania said:

They didn't resolve it, though. Like I said in my post, they just reposted the same message they keep dropping in the forums when they lock posts about it.

 

When you follow that link, it tells you to "Turn off or uninstall any autoclickers, macroing software, or ad skippers you're using." The built-in app that caused the false positive is not any of those and frankly I shouldn't have to disable one of my phones built-in features like that just to play this game.

As I see in the only ticket you made on support yesterday, you just complained about the wave of bans, closed forum posts and mentioned having "nothing extra on my Android that is even remotely related to PokeMMO and the only in-game settings I've changed have been the controls". You never mentioned reading both articles previously. The answer you received was what we instructed staff to do, lead players to both articles I mentioned.

It was expected (and, again, mentioned in the article) that if your issue wasn't resolved after following them, you should contact our support again informing this so we could investigate your case, which you never did, so we had no way to investigate and help you further.

[Vertania]

25 minutes ago, Teddiursa said:

As I see in the only ticket you made on support yesterday, you just complained about the wave of bans, closed forum posts and mentioned having "nothing extra on my Android that is even remotely related to PokeMMO and the only in-game settings I've changed have been the controls". You never mentioned reading both articles previously. The answer you received was what we instructed staff to do, lead players to both articles I mentioned.

It was expected (and, again, mentioned in these articles) that if your issue wasn't resolved after following them, you should contact our support again informing this so we could investigate your case, which you never did, so we had no way to investigate and help you further.

The ticket was closed without any further explanation, so what exactly was I supposed to do next? Open another ticket with the same screenshot?

 

You're blanket banning Android users for apps and features that come stock on their phones. That's not okay and we shouldn't have to disable them just because your cheat detection isn't working correctly.

 

Also, I like how you only quoted one sentence of my ticket and glossed over everything else that criticized your handling of communication.

 

---

 

Edit to add the ticket he quoted:

 

Y'all need to stop trying to brush this under the rug on the forums and pretending like everyone on Android is using some kind of cheat software. It's incredibly obvious by the number of posts that this many people are not cheating or using exploits. I have installed literally nothing extra on my Android that is even remotely related to PokeMMO and the only in-game settings I've changed have been the controls. If your anti-cheat bot is marking so many unrelated apps and settings as false positives, get it together and fix the bot.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Vertania

[RysPicz]

lmao now I really fear opening pokemmo on my phone or tablet

[TheKrimsonKang]

9 hours ago, Poufilou said:

The copy paste thing is from staff, which are not qualified to give people an answer about what could possibly be going on, they just direct to those who can, in the appropriate place (not general forums). 

I'm sorry but this is a terrible terrible excuse. If they are not qualified to answer and don't know about the issue they have no business locking posts and shutting down discussions they aren't redirecting to anything or anybody who will actually help they are just plopping a useless link in to make it look like they did something then locking threads. 

[Seth]

4 hours ago, TheKrimsonKang said:

I'm sorry but this is a terrible terrible excuse. If they are not qualified to answer and don't know about the issue they have no business locking posts and shutting down discussions they aren't redirecting to anything or anybody who will actually help they are just plopping a useless link in to make it look like they did something then locking threads. 

Do yourself a favor and stop acting like a prime example of a Karen. 

[TheKrimsonKang]

2 minutes ago, Seth said:

Do yourself a favor and stop acting like a prime example of a Karen. 

What is that even supposed to mean dude? Is that all you have? Just call me names? What a weird hill to die on man protecting the rights of the ignorant to stifle conversation that they disagree with. It's a shame to see someone I have respect for act like this. 

[Seth]

33 minutes ago, TheKrimsonKang said:

What is that even supposed to mean dude? Is that all you have? Just call me names? What a weird hill to die on man protecting the rights of the ignorant to stifle conversation that they disagree with. It's a shame to see someone I have respect for act like this. 

I am very sorry if I didn't get your name right. I deeply apologize and wish you a nice day. 🙂

[Foohy]

So you basically updated the game with an intrusive anticheat that is snooping around people's files on their phones?

Might have to uninstall it completely.

 

No offense, you guys did made a great game, but I don't think people are comfortable with giving a bootleg pokemon developer intrusive access to their phone files, unless you are willing to let us know how this anticheat works exactly.

 

Also, what do ad blockers have to do with tampering with the game client?

[Sawwario]

Hi foohy, I really have no clue on computers, code and things like this, but as far as logic goes from what I read*, I think it's the other way around: it's not the pokemmo app having access to your phone data, but instead it's the app that the new system reads as bot that have access to pokemmo and lead to the bad situation most of us android users are having. Me, personally, I've not experienced any issue yet, despite the in-built game experience booster my phone runs in the background every time I play a game application and that lets me have access to pop up screens from discord, prime et cetera. And I have a bad old oppo phone. 

 

*

Quote

 

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Sawwario

[Poufilou]

8 hours ago, TheKrimsonKang said:

I'm sorry but this is a terrible terrible excuse. If they are not qualified to answer and don't know about the issue they have no business locking posts and shutting down discussions they aren't redirecting to anything or anybody who will actually help they are just plopping a useless link in to make it look like they did something then locking threads. 

But... they are redirecting to something, the support system. That's where you need to communicate your issues. Not the forums. If you do nothing else than complain on forums of course they will do nothing. You need to actually use the appropriate place. 

[TheKrimsonKang]

8 hours ago, Poufilou said:

But... they are redirecting to something, the support system. That's where you need to communicate your issues. Not the forums. If you do nothing else than complain on forums of course they will do nothing. You need to actually use the appropriate place. 

Interesting theory, however I' don't think any of this would even be getting looked into if players hadn't made a stink about it on forums or reddit. Especially when you consider that the devs didn't start reversing bans or even acknowledging there was a problem until after hundreds of posts had already been made about it.

[Poufilou]

19 minutes ago, TheKrimsonKang said:

Interesting theory, however I' don't think any of this would even be getting looked into if players hadn't made a stink about it on forums or reddit. Especially when you consider that the devs didn't start reversing bans or even acknowledging there was a problem until after hundreds of posts had already been made about it.

Interesting theory, you must certainly know a lot about what devs are doing from your use of forum space. If you think people complaining on forums triggered devs making action then you don't know much about them. Lmao

[Raichuforyou]

Could we maybe get some information if the devs have found some positives with specifically named popular apps that may be triggering this notification to occur? It would help for end users help troubleshooting issues when we open tickets with you guys.

I also understand not wanting to blatantly point players in the direction of malicious cheating applications to try and download and see for themselves. But I'm just curious to see if there has been non-malicious applications that you guys are getting consistent reports on.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Raichuforyou

[Doctor]

19 minutes ago, Raichuforyou said:

Could we maybe get some information if the devs have found some positives with specifically named popular apps that may be triggering this notification to occur? It would help for end users help troubleshooting issues when we open tickets with you guys.

I also understand not wanting to blatantly point players in the direction of malicious cheating applications to try and download and see for themselves. But I'm just curious to see if there has been non-malicious applications that you guys are getting consistent reports on.

Someone said Anydesk was giving them trouble, I think that's the only named app I've seen here

[Raichuforyou]

9 minutes ago, Doctor said:

Someone said Anydesk was giving them trouble, I think that's the only named app I've seen here

Anydesk is also the noted app in question that is seemingly giving me false positives. If that is the case... that is a bit disappointing. Anydesk is a very important tool.

I'm not a development guy at all, but I wonder if these blanket warnings/bans are being given out just because the accessibility service wants these two permissions:

[Vertania]

54 minutes ago, Raichuforyou said:

Could we maybe get some information if the devs have found some positives with specifically named popular apps that may be triggering this notification to occur? It would help for end users help troubleshooting issues when we open tickets with you guys.

For me, it was the "Swipe to Split" app that came built in on my Motorola