Dear Niantic Team,
As the administrator of the largest European Pikmin Bloom community, I want to draw attention to a problem that is increasingly causing trouble in the Pikmin Bloom community: the use of GPS spoofing and other unauthorized software to manipulate the game location.
Players are increasingly reporting activities that suggest the use of such tools. By artificially altered location data, individual users can bypass game mechanics and gain advantages that are not available to regular players. This affects the fairness of the game and can negatively impact the motivation of honest players in the long term.
Pikmin Bloom thrives on movement, discovery, and fair participation of all users. If rule violations are not adequately detected or sanctioned, the impression arises that adhering to the game rules no longer matters. This can weaken the community’s trust in the integrity of the game.
Therefore, I would like to ask Niantic to further improve the detection of GPS spoofing and other manipulation methods, consistently review and sanction known violations, regularly inform the community about measures against cheating, and examine additional technical protection mechanisms to detect location manipulation at an early stage. Many players appreciate Pikmin Bloom precisely because of its real movement and exploration aspect. It is all the more important that the same rules apply to everyone and that unauthorized advantages are effectively prevented. Thank you very much for your attention and for your efforts to ensure the integrity and fairness of Pikmin Bloom in the long term.
I have attached some example screenshots of pages on social media that, despite being reported to Niantic and Facebook, are still online and almost posting new GPS data every minute. Stop this please
!
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Leaving a comment to add visibility.
Already expressed the same concern and linked several spoofers’ posts from Threads in previous post about Taiwanese spoofers.
They have many groups/chats sharing mushrooms’ and Big Flowers’ coordinates. It’s really insane how publicly and shamelessly they are when discussing spoofing on social media. Pikmin Bloom has an official Threads account and I bet they can easily find many spoofers’ posts but they did absolutely nothing and condoned such behavior.
At first it was due to an influx of new players joining Pikmin Bloom and many players complaining about not being able to join mushroom battles. Then a few months ago, Niantic added a bunch of new mushroom locations and they are still complaining about the postcards aren’t “good looking” or they are spoofing for rare mushrooms like elemental or large shrooms… the greed just never ends
They are truly obnoxious and even Japanese players posted about it just a few days ago…
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I also really hope the game officials will give players a response soon. Since I made a post about this issue on May 6th, it did spark some discussion, and lately, many other players have been calling out the spoofing/cheating problem as well.
However, the official team still hasn’t announced any countermeasures, which is honestly quite disappointing.
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Yeah I was wondering why suddenly there’s so many Taiwanese fellows live in my neighborhood (Europe) until I realized they are spoofers and only hunt for large/elemental mushrooms and also intentionally slow cooking. Please do something. Banning them won’t really kill them. Maybe increase also the number of free slot for mushrooms battle in Taiwan AND ban the spoofers at the same time. Allow me to remind you that the spoofers pay for third-party app for spoofing but not a dime for Niantic.
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Actually a lot of them don’t pay for the spoofing apps, especially with AI/Claude, people can easily vibe-code their own spoofing app… (and yes, some share it on Threads and brags about it, too…)
(There are also a bunch of free ones on Google Play store)
If Niantic really wants to profit from those “players” AND “try” to solve this problem, they might as well just develop a new game specifically for them and direct them there… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Hello from Europe!
Things are getting out of control in our area. Only a few of us play locally, so we plant petals over several days and clear mushrooms together. Weekends used to be the time to invite friends to tackle the event mushrooms, which was one of the few perks of living in a small village.
Now, large and special mushrooms are occupied, and spoofers are blooming out‑of‑season flowers.
The image is from today: I visited a city hoping to plant some petals and earn some nectars, but almost everything was in bloom and irrelevant to the season. I’ve reported this several times, but our region is turning into a farming spot for spoofers.
I used to enjoy this game and appreciate the community, but it’s getting frustrating 
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Ugh… that really sucks…
What’s worse is that this has been reported/continuing happening months ago and we still hear nothing back from the devs or mods… It almost feels like English forums are the least catered place especially compared with Japanese and Korean ones.
Sooner or later, this game will be filled with spoofers just like Pokemon Go gyms.
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@robert2331177 surely the Japanese and Korean forums are also discussing this issue..?
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This issue is being discussed in Japanese forums, but there has been no comment from the management.
Niantic’s terms of service prohibit location spoofing, multiple accounts for a single player, and playing by proxy, yet they have no effective means to enforce these prohibitions—a truly pathetic situation.
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@WilliamL76 I tried to Google-translate a few recent Korean posts and it doesn’t seem like they have much discussion regarding spoofing issues…
Japanese posts also have fairly high reply rate but like what @lavista1960 said, they all somehow managed to skip the ones that are complaining or discussing about cheating in game and spoofing.
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With the new Chinese forum being added, finally see the official response regarding spoofing/cheating with the most generic reply…
Translated by Firefox built-in translator:
Thank you for your valuable feedback!
We have received your feedback and understand your views on the flowering mechanism. The comments you have provided have been recorded and shared with the relevant team.
We are sorry that we are unable to provide further explanation or response to your suggestion, nor can we comment on whether there will be any future adjustments.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.
Safe to guess that spoofers are not going to stop after reading that…
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Hopefully something is being done..? But who knows 
Personally I really can’t see the fun in spoofing (cheating) in this type of game.. it almost seems like cheating in a game of Solitaire.
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Hopefully… but I highly doubt cause they couldn’t even give us a concrete answer… or take any actions after so many complaints.
I guess the spoofers probably also enjoys messing up with us genuine players. 
Literally saw a post from the Chinese forum claimed they didn’t receive nectar rewards from mushroom battles and asking for help. They claimed they were bull-horned to Centenary Baptist Church crystal shroom but the postcard screenshot says otherwise.. (they’ve already edited and removed the image, but it’s quite obvious that the postcard was definitely not bull-horned)
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Got the same situation here again… and this is nowhere near Europe
Saw these unnatural flower paths in and near a university. All the Yellow Birds of Paradise were bloomed around 1am to 2am. Most of the students are gone for summer break and it must’ve been the faculties staying up late at school planting flowers! They’re most definitely able to walk through buildings on campus and trespass every nearby store/restaurants just to bloom these Yellow Birds of Paradise!!
It’s a great flower to have for the monthly missions but seriously, 2am??? I felt like “cattle” living on those spoofers’ “flower farm.” I should’ve got out of bed and dress up to go for some sleep walk, collecting those precious nectar they’ve spared us…
As if that was not enough, there’s more impossible flower paths at nearby residential area. They managed to walk through rows of houses and water at around 11pm blooming whatever they want.
Thanks to spoofers, I felt like a total idiot playing this game fairly
There’s no more game in Pikmin Bloom when your neighborhood is invaded by cheaters
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I also live near a college and have observed almost daily gps spoofers taking over the campus, walking thru fences, parking structures etc. After many complaints I’ve given up reporting their behavior to in game support. The target area seems to be growing to include a neighborhood park as well.
I wish developers would give anti spoofing more priority. The game isn’t motivating if we are unable to get any sense of accomplishment and instead just feel like victims of unfair play.
If our in-game reporting is lacking details they need, then they should provide an in-game feature for reporting that collects the info they need.
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Everyday I see more and more of this and yesterday I saw these very long (several miles long actually) straight lines with flowers planted all over my city what on earth is up with that? Not between big flowers that is 
@novy021 I know exactly what you mean I also feel like quite the idiot playing “honestly”! 
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Spoofing is out of control pretty much and I’m not spending any more money in the game until this is taken care of. Nada! 
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The situation with spoofing in Japan is getting more and more out of control too 
Mushrooms full of cheaters makes it harder and harder to even get a chance to play with, even inviting friends to crush mushrooms and sending postcards now feels risky. What if a cheater targets those places…Lots of Taiwanese and Hong Kong players use location spoofing to collect good looking postcards
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I just found one of these obvious lines my self. I didn’t think there would be cheaters where I am, but I suppose anywhere on the map is a target.
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