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Gaming the system: Players selling Pokemon Go accounts online

Our unscientific survey shows many more sellers than buyers, and both parties could have their accounts disabled.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read
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Pokemon Go account sellers have high hopes, but many eBay sales have zero bids.

Screenshot by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper/CNET

Too lazy to put in the time practicing your Pokeball throws, hunting down rare Pokemons, or evolving your captured collection? Hey there, Richie Rich, money solves everything!

Experienced players are offering their Pokemon Go accounts for sale on eBay and other online forums. But so far, no one seems to be getting rich off that Vaporean caught in Central Park. Search eBay for "Pokemon Go account" and you'll find a bizarre bazaar of offerings. You can scoop up a level 12 account for just over a dollar (whaaat?) or indulge in a level 22 or 23 account for about the cost of a new iPhone.

Yet scroll through the listings and you'll note many of them have something in common. Zero bids.

Maybe some are wary of getting caught. Terms of service for the game warn that it's a violation to sell, resell, rent or lease a Pokemon Go account, and such accounts could be shut down. And eBay and other services are as public and easy to search for Niantic personnel as they are for would-be Pokemon pros.

The Guardian did report on one eBay seller who supposedly raked in $1,500 (about £1,145 AU$2,000) for his or her account, writing in the item description, "I'm just a broke college student in debt." And who can blame that shrewd scholar? It's way more fun to build up a gaming account and unload it than to put in sweaty hours behind the steamy Hobart dishwasher in the dorm cafeteria. The right Pokemon pro might even get a good economics thesis out of it.

Humans of Pokemon Go

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