Members of the Pokemon Go community were left frustrated after learning a fan received a 7-day ban for submitting a Waypoint.
Niantic Wayfarer is a tool that lets players submit new Waypoints for games like Pokemon Go, which then take the form of PokeStops.
Fans who use Wayfarer can also approve community-submitted Waypoints. While this can be positive in practice, it has led to much frustration among the community as many submitted Waypoints were continuously shot down.
This has resulted in some Pokemon Go players receiving lengthy bans to both their PoGo accounts and their Wayfarer accounts.
It seems these bans may be picking up steam once again, as a post on the Pokemon Go subreddit titled, “Waypoints can get you banned?” gained traction among the community.
The OP explained, “My friend finally reached level 37 a few days ago. He went through the waypoint tutorial and everything…”
The fan continued and said their friend went through the normal submission process and submitted a sign for the local beach, which was his first submission through Wayfarer.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
“Today he woke up to an email from Niantic and a 7-day ban. Can someone explain this to me? Because now I’m nervous to submit any more waypoints out of fear some rando reports the submission and I get banned.”
Many trainers in the comments vented their frustrations on the Wayfarer acceptance process, with plenty sharing negative experiences.
“I submitted a waypoint, had it denied, then the same person that reviewed it resubmitted the exact same one with pictures and all and had it approved,” one player claimed.
Others claimed they’d completely given up on submitting Waypoints due to instances like this. “I stopped submitting anything the second I saw this could happen. I was so excited to go out and find routes but getting punished for something as unclear as this is just insane.”
The OP updated the post informing the community that the trainer in question is attempting to reach out to Niantic to resolve the issue, with no such luck so far.