Tech Trend 247

Pokémon Go's only been in Singapore for half a day, but cheaters are already ruining the experience for everyone.

The record-breaking mobile game finally hit the city state on Saturday after players waited a month since the game's debut in North America and Australia.

But tap on any of the gyms and you'll see them occupied by powerful Pokémon of around 2000 CP, and trainers at level 30 or more.

Given that the game's only been here since early morning, it's a pretty safe bet that many of these players have been levelling up over the past month by employing a number of workarounds. One of those is GPS spoofing, which feeds a different GPS location to the software, so it thinks you're in another country.

This has allowed players to move around catching Pokémon in the game without needing to physically travel — and cheat in countries where the game's map has been empty, by viewing the map belonging to another location.

The workaround isn't uncommon, but risks a ban from the game since it's cheating and against Niantic's usage policy.

People have been expressing their unhappiness online:

Still, with so many waiting for the game, you can expect this weekend to be overrun by Pokémon catching zombies.

The police have released an advisory on Facebook, too.