Pokemon Go has taken the world by storm.
Millions of people are out pounding the streets looking for wild Pokemon and on a mission to ‘Catch em all’ on the augmented reality game.
Trainers have been clocking up some ridiculous miles trying to advance in the game, catch more Pokemon and boost their levels.
It sounds like it takes some serious dedication to become a Pokemon Master – even hatching some of the eggs on the game requires you to walk miles.
But if all this sounds like too much hard work and you just want to be a top trainer right now, then there’s a solution.
We were not surprised to see Pokemon Go accounts already up for sale offering novice trainers a shortcut to master status.
Buying a ready-made account, with beefed up levels and bags of ready-caught Pokemon isn’t cheap though (as well as being against Nintendo’s terms of use).
Some accounts on Ebay and Craiglist are being auctioned off for thousands of pounds – even though it’s against the terms of the game.
One of the largest we’ve seen is for a Level 23 Pokemon Go account in Brighton, in England, which was sold for £7,300 and had 24 bids.
Another Level 23 account appeared on Ebay with a starting bid of £2,000 to buy.
It came with shots of some of the already-caught Pokemon including Arcanine, Vaporeon and Pigeot.
One eBay user selling a Pokémon Go account for $1,800 (£1,370) wrote: “The game is great and I had so much fun for the past two and a half weeks but I’m afraid I [have come] to the point where I won’t be able to play much because of work and studies”, according to the Telegraph.
“You can have a really strong account to smash the gyms … and show off to your friends!
“I have ground, fire and water Pokémons … everything you need to log in and claim gyms like a boss!”
Niantic Labs, the developers behind the game, warned against ‘cheating’ like this in its terms of use.
“Use the Services or Content, or any portion thereof, for any commercial purpose or for the benefit of any third party or in a manner not permitted by these Terms, including but not limited to (a) gathering in App items or resources for sale outside the App, (b) performing services in the App in exchange for payment outside the App, or (c ) sell, resell, rent, or lease the App or your Account.”
In its Trainer Guidelines, Niantic Labs said it could results in a warning, a suspension or even if violations of the terms of use are repeated or serious, termination of your account.
