Several Pokémon Go players have been reporting getting their accounts suspended over nominating new Pokéstops that didn’t meet the criteria of the Wayfarer program.
To improve the game, players can enter the Wayfarer program and submit entries that will add activities and enhance the exploration for everyone. Nominating Pokéstops is one of them, and players claim they’ve been suspended for failing to get those accepted, without means to get successful appeals.
Players have been reporting 30-day suspensions from the game since the beginning of September. While some doubted those players were suspended for this reason specifically, one of them shared an email from Niantic that explicitly mentioned this as a cause for suspension.
“We have confirmed that you have been submitting nominations that do not meet our criteria,” the mail reportedly reads. “As a result of this violation, your Wayfarer and Pokémon GO accounts have been suspended for 30 days.”
Those suspensions started being issued after a new policy to prevent abusive PokéStop submissions was launched in the Wayfarer program, at the end of August.
Players have expressed frustration over this, especially considering nominating new PokéStops is helping both the game and the developer, rather than themselves, but they get punished for it.
Content creator Zyonik, who gathered several complaints of suspended players, argued that if nominating PokéStops that didn’t meet the criteria of Wayfarer’s program was a violation of Terms of Service, players should get their Wayfarer account suspended, but not their Pokémon Go one as well.
Since then, Niantic has backtracked, however, and adjusted the penalties for abusive nominations to curb wrongful suspensions. On Sept. 15, it revealed the launch of a “Wayfarer Abuse Enforcement Ladder,” issuing warnings before suspensions, as well as an appeal process for eventual wrongful suspensions.
On the other side, some players reported not getting more chances with the new process. It’s still unclear if more players are getting wrongfully suspended in Pokémon Go since the ladder was launched.
