Catching ’em all just got a lot harder. Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, has made collecting all 151 creatures more difficult with a series of updates and disabled access to Pokévision.
Using Niantic’s API, the tracker grabbed the location of all nearby Pokémon and placed them on a map. It’s not the only tracking website that appears to have gone offline, Pokéhound displays the message: “We tried our best :(“
The maps showed where each Pokémon could be found and how long it would be in the location for. Essentially the apps provided a way for gamers to find the rarest Pokémon near them, without having to aimlessly walk through a maze of Ratattas and Pidgeys.
Over the weekend both services went offline – apparently at the request of the Niantic and Nintendo. When trying to find the game’s creatures using PokéVision, gamers are greeted with the following message “Our services are currently unavailable,” before they are directed to check Twitter for updates.
“At this moment, we are respecting Niantic and Nintendo’s wishes,” a message on the corresponding PokéVision Twitter account says.
Stopping support, or at least a temporary request to the creators to stop providing the maps, probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. In an interview with Forbes, Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke said he was “not a fan” of the websites, adding that they may not work in the future.
“People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game. People are hacking around trying to take data out of our system and that’s against our terms of service,” he said.
Much of the success of third-party location services has come in response to one particular Pokémon Go feature not working as intended. Footsteps shown next to nearby Pokémon in the game were intended to indicate how far away each of the creatures were. Three footprints next to a Pokémon’s name showed it wasn’t that close; when a player moved closer the footprints would decrease. But since the game launched in early July the feature hasn’t worked properly.
In the last couple of days, instead of fixing the problem, Niantic’s most recent update to the game has taken-away the feature entirely. “Removed footprints of nearby Pokémon,” the game’s update said.
All was not lost with the update though: players are now able to change the look of their trainer, damage values for some battle moves have been updated, and memory issues have apparently been updated.
