Why is obvious multiaccounting tolerated?
Does the support even have any way to eliminate a cheater at all? Because it looks like they don’t. For example... we’ve got a “recurrent case”: a guy (known for many years) who has already had tens of bans on various multi-accounts, including recently on his “main” account — and we reported him with not much effect. He just keeps "playing", keeps creating new puppet accounts on the fly, and always has at least 3–4 accounts ready. Getting to lvl8 takes him about 1.5–3 hours, depending on whether he feels like using double AP, and he always does it the same way, on almost the same route ending at his home. The accounts add resonators to the same home couch portal; some don't move at all, only hack the gear, some move and "play" along known routes with other members of cheater's family.
Everybody knows about his cheating, tens of reports were sent. People met him playing using two phones, often on accounts of his family (which never got banned for this). When met personally he openly admits he's cheating, and when people complain, he simply says "will be more"...
So, what’s the point of offering paid inventory space (+500 CORE, +5x100 CARGO) if a cheater can just make another backpack account and get +2000 for free, risking nothing but this backpack?
What’s the point of limiting the number of resonators in a portal, so that making a lvl7 requires 3 players and a lvl8 portal requires 8 players, if a cheater can just create the needed number of accounts and instantly build that portal by himself?
What’s the point of heat sinks and multi-hacks if a cheater can just put a few phones on the table and get the gear N times faster and N times more?
What's the point of shields and building network of portals if the cheater, whenever feels like it, just loads thousands of xmp8 hacked and stored using backpacks into a few accounts (his and his family) and drives around wiping out everything instantly (things which require many players to build).
Getting one puppet account banned takes weeks of reporting and proving to support that yes, the cheater is still a cheater — while in the meantime he makes another account in 2 hours. With the same nickname as before, plus one character, he doesn't care. Or with a nickname insulting the people who report him — when he used the direct name, it got banned, but when he created just “DickAt<address>”, our game support apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with it.
And that’s how it goes in our city — people gradually stopped playing because there is zero sense in competing against blatant cheating ignored by the support... At least recently there is less spoofing, but multiaccounting destroys the game too. There are now only 2–3 somewhat active players left per faction, so a cheater with 8 accounts who can build himself a lvl 8 portal wherever and whenever he wants definitely shifts the balance.