Jimmy Derocher, a hardcore Pokémon GO player from Austin, Texas, attempted to legitimately earn a million XP over the course of a day. However, despite Derocher using no cheating software of any kind, he was issued a soft ban before he was able to accomplish the feat.
Derocher has been spending the past few weeks thinking of how to accumulate as much XP as possible in the massively popular augmented reality mobile game without resorting to cheating. Earlier this month, he was able to collect a million XP over a weekend, a feat that he wanted to prove because other players kept insisting that it was impossible to do so without using cheats.
The plan to collect a million XP in a single day involved a special walking route that Derocher devised. Fondly named Jimmy's Loop, the 0.2-mile route allows Derocher to visit 10 PokéStops each time, with lures placed on each of the PokéStops.
Along with Jimmy's Loop, Derocher devised a certain set of rules. Each lap around the route should never last over five minutes, and he should never stop to catch Pokémon unless there are more of them at the current node. Derocher will be taking frequent breaks at the first and third spots of the route, and he should minimize the distance of each lap whenever possible. "And don't die," Derocher playfully adds.
Derocher said that he would be streaming the million XP attempt on Twitch, aided by his friends who would also be taking on the challenge. News of the attempt broke out, with a thousand other Pokémon GO players saying that they will be joining Derocher in person.
The first several hours went by smoothly, with Derocher reaching hundreds of thousands of XP as he walked through Jimmy's Loop, accessing PokéStops while catching and evolving Pokémon. However, at the 13th hour, he encountered a problem.
Suddenly Derocher could not catch any Pokémon, as they kept running away no matter what type of Pokéball was used. With an accumulated XP of 600,000, Derocher triggered Pokémon GO developer Niantic Labs' anti-cheating system, resulting in a soft ban. He was still able to collect XP from visiting PokéStops and watching Pokémon run away, but the soft ban ultimately killed his chances of reaching a million XP.
Accumulating such a massive amount of XP in a short time has been largely attributed to bots, which are software that allow players to cheat their way into high levels and powerful Pokémon by automating the game. Niantic Labs has taken a harder stance against cheaters, promising to hand out bans to players who are found to be using such software.
Derocher claims that the limit that Niantic Labs has placed for its anti-cheating system may have been done haphazardly, with the developer not realizing that hardcore players such as himself can reach such high amounts of XP without using bots.
Nevertheless, despite the soft ban that Niantic Labs applied on Derocher, his attempt to accumulate a million XP in a single day was able to raise about $50 to $60 using the Charity Miles app thanks to stream donations.
Before the attempt, Derocher sent a tweet to Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke to allow him to evade the soft ban that he was expecting. Needless to say, the request did not reach Hanke's ears. It would be nice if Niantic Labs would allow Derocher another attempt though, as accumulating a million XP in a single day would be a great feat to achieve.
