Since its Game Boy days during the nineties, Pokémon games have always susceptible to cheats and exploits. Sword & Shield has been no exception, as temporary bans have been issued to players who deal with dodgy pocket monsters.
The Pokémon Company is rumored to be bringing the hammer down on players who enter into a 'hacked raid' or host the raid itself. According to Nintendo Soup and a number of users on Twitter, Trainers may now face up to a two month ban for taking part in an illegal raid or a permanent ban for creating the illicit Den. While The Pokémon Company have not yet made an official statement regarding bans for raids, they have warned that action will be taken.
Within the last few days, Twitter users have been alerting each other of the consequences of partaking in these hacked raids. Trainers who have participated or hosted illegal raids are met with a notification on their Nintendo Switch that alerts the player with the following message: "Online services for this software is currently restricted." These spontaneous bans give us some indication that TPC are starting to clamp down on hackers that have inevitably caused various in-game bugs in the past.
At the start of the year TPC updated Sword and Shield that fixed a nasty bug caused by "hacked" Pokémon. These crafted monsters could ultimately be received by any player through the Y-Net's trading system and could potentially corrupt the gameplay of innocent bystanders. In TPC's latest statement on the update, they assured players that normal gameplay would resume after the update downloaded. They also commented in their early 2020 statement that they had ironed out many unspecified issues to provide a smoother experience for the Trainer.
You can often tell if a raid is hacked by the type of Pokémon it features. Legendary Pokémon and creatures not included in Sword and Shield's Pokédex are all obvious signs of an illegal raid. Game Freak has provided "checks" for every generation of Pokémon to decide whether a monster with incredibly high stats, for example, is possible or not. TPC have also been banning Trainers who knowingly disconnect from a battle to stop the opposing players victory.
The Pokémon devs have never been blind to Trainers' ongoing misuse of cheat codes or in-game technicalities. But when illegal hacking starts to disrupt other player's gameplay, they seem prepared to quickly filter out the Team Rocket's of the gaming community.
Source: NintendoSoup, Atrius97/Twitter