"Pokémon Go" players have shown their fury on Niantic soon after the discovery that the new game update disabled mapping and tracking apps that helped to track and find Pokémon easily and more efficiently.
Since "Pokémon go" is an augmented reality game designed to make players go into the real world and hunt for Pokémon, "lazy" fans opted on cheating instead. Originally, "Pokémon Go" players were able to use a featured system called "Nearby," which displayed a list of all Pokémon in their surrounding area.
The feature, further, gave players guidelines on how to find them. However, it broke and stopped working shortly after the game update was launched on July 31.
The update in question disabled the "footprints" inbuilt app feature that showed players how far Pokémon was. As well, other third-party apps, tapped into the game to create maps showing nearby Pokémon and their time signatures, were also shut down.
According to Coventry Telegraph, "Pokémon Go" players are now disappointed in Niantic's move of destroying the very apps that enabled them to track individual Pokémon, something that they believe made the game fun. Angry players have even gone to the extent of demanding refunds from Apple and Google for what they spent on in-game purchases.
Majority of users have created a frenzy in online platforms, with Twitter taking the lead. Most users are claiming that Niantic has begun ruining "Pokémon Go," a game that has broken records both in iOS and Google Play Stores and raised its profile.
In an interview with Forbes, CEO of Niantic John Hanke said that he was not in support of the third- party apps. According to him, such apps do not only take the fun from the game but also the guarantee of "Pokémon Go's" reliability in future.
In the meantime, "Pokémon Go's" Apple App Store rating for the new version of the game has dropped to 1.5 stars out of 5, making the overall score for all versions of the game stand at only three stars. Although Niantic has not confirmed if the crashing down of inbuilt apps is temporary or permanent, players can still use Pokémon tracking and mapping apps that do not rely on tapping into the game to find Pokémon.
Check out the video below for "Pokemon Go" bans info: