The Pokémon Company just banned more than seven thousand “Pokémon Sun and Moon” players from engaging in online activity after learning that these Nintendo 3DS owners have altered their saved data. This is the second time within this year that the company banned numerous cheaters from its online system.

On Tuesday, Serebii reported that 7,651 players were found to have changed their saved data in “Pokémon Sun and Moon.” Because of this, the players are now banned from doing online activity in the game. As such, they are blocked from accessing Game Sync and from joining Rating Battles and Battle Competitions. They are also noted allowed to participate in the Global Missions, which is now on its fifth run. When banned players attempt to do any online activity, they will be presented with the error code 090-0212 message.

The Pokémon Company also expressed its serious goal of cracking down cheaters when it noted that its people will continue to pursue players who have edited or illegally altered their saved data. The same punishment shall be given to players who are found to be cheating the game’s system, and the company is willing to impose these restrictions without prior notice to cheaters.

This isn’t the first time that The Pokémon Company banned thousands of players for cheating. Back in January, 5,954 people were blocked from accessing Battle Spot, the feature that facilitates automatic matchmaking between players from around the world. At the time, the company stated that the players were barred from doing online activity due to “illegal save data.” The ban is going to be a big problem to cheaters since it is imposed as a permanent penalty, as per Polygon.

Cheating is rampant in “Pokémon” games because of the different tools that players can access to create fake monsters from scratch, according to Kotaku. There are also tools that enable players to alter save data to ensure that they remain on top of the game or ahead of others. It is also easy for players to get hacked Pokémon from someone else. Given all these, it’s not surprising why The Pokémon Company is determined to ban cheaters from its online system.

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