"Pokémon GO" may be incredibly popular, but the game and its creators are currently embroiled in a contentious battle with many of the game's fans. At the heart of the argument is something much more simple than the game: poor communication.
So the story goes:
- "Pokémon GO" launches in the US, New Zealand, and Australia in early July, and receives a tremendous response.
- Millions of people are playing the game, from hardcore gamers to your Uncle Morty. So many people are playing the game that the servers are constantly crashing.
- As the game launched in more and more parts of the world through the month, server problems persisted. It became a running joke that the game was always broken.
- All the while, the game's creator Niantic Labs said very little publicly.
Players grew more and more frustrated with Niantic over the lack of communication throughout July. Outside of a few interviews with the company's CEO John Hanke and a public appearance he made at San Diego Comic Con, the game studio has largely failed to address specific player concerns in public forums.
The Pokemon Company
Niantic outright removed Pokémon tracking functionality from "Pokémon GO" in its first major update.
Primary among those concerns was a problem called the "three-step glitch," which made it impossible to track Pokémon in the game. Considering that "Pokémon GO" is a combination of tracking Pokémon, capturing Pokémon, and battling Pokémon, the glitch is a major problem.
A few intrepid coders took on the challenge of devising solutions to the problem, which led to the rise of services like PokéVision. Yet, in the first major update to the game since it launched nearly one month ago, Niantic didn't fix the glitch. Instead, the company removed the Pokémon tracking system altogether. Worse, Niantic sent cease-and-desist letters to services like PokéVision.
Fans at this point are madder than ever. Mad enough, in fact, that they're asking for iTunes and Google Play refunds - and getting them - from money spent in-game on stuff like Lure Modules and Pokéballs.
Niantic isn't saying a word - until now. The company issued a statement on the game's Facebook page overnight. It reads as follows:
"Trainers,
As many of you know, we recently made some changes to 'Pokémon GO.'
- We have removed the '3-step' display in order to improve upon the underlying design. The original feature, although enjoyed by many, was also confusing and did not meet our underlying product goals. We will keep you posted as we strive to improve this feature.
- We have limited access by third-party services which were interfering with our ability to maintain quality of service for our users and to bring 'Pokémon GO' to users around the world. The large number of users has made the roll-out of 'Pokémon GO' around the world an... interesting… challenge. And we aren't done yet! Yes, Brazil, we want to bring the game to you (and many other countries where it is not yet available).
We have read your posts and emails and we hear the frustration from folks in places where we haven't launched yet, and from those of you who miss these features. We want you to know that we have been working crazy hours to keep the game running as we continue to launch globally. If you haven't heard us Tweeting much it's because we've been heads down working on the game. But we'll do our best going forward to keep you posted on what's going on.
Be safe, be nice to your fellow trainers, and keep on exploring.
The 'Pokémon GO' team"
Unfortunately, the statement still doesn't offer frustrated fans any answers, or a future to look forward to where the game they've invested dozens of hours into is functional once again. Here's hoping we find out something more concrete sooner than later. We've reached out to Niantic on these matters separately and we'll update this piece if we hear back.