People are seen playing during Hong Kong's first 'Pokemon Go' tram party organized by 'Sam the Local', on July 30, 2016 in Hong Kong. (Photo : Getty Images/Lam Yik Fei)
After a rough week for Pokémon Go players who were disgruntled over some updates that Niantic Labs made, the software development company decided to listen to the players and submit to their demands.
In Niantic's latest update, the challenge of searching and capturing Pokémon has been doubled because they decided to remove the 3 step tracker of the game. In the feature, footsteps appear depending on how close a wild Pokémon is.
This has caused an uproar among players because the feature was so important that no one wanted it removed. In reality, they were expecting it to improve in Niantic's next update.
Third-party "Pokémon Go" companion third-party apps have also been disabled by Niantic. These enraged people further because these applications still provided the 3 Step Tracker feature, making it easier to catch and track Pokémon.
Fortunately, Niantic Labs released a post regarding the issue and it is a good news for fans. Apparently, the removal of the 3 Step Tracker was only temporary, according to a post in their website. They have assured the fans that they are working on it, and all they want is for the fans to be happy.
At the same post, Niantic also discussed the rationale behind removing and denying access by third-party apps. It turned out that the third-party apps were taking up a huge chunk of their servers and resources, which has caused inconvenience to newer players because they could not play the game due to server errors.
Moreover, some of them were also being used for cheating and even as far as siphoning data off the social media accounts of players. These, Niantic said, did not only put players on risk, but also made the game unfair to those who play it fairly. By blocking these third party apps altogether, the server overload goes down, and everyone gets to play fairly.
These third-party apps have also caused delay on Pokémon Go being released from other Latin America countries, such as Brazil. Overall, fans are looking forward to even better experiences among users, and Niantic Labs are all doing their best in keeping this promise. A Niantic representative said that the whole company has been working crazy hours so that the game becomes available to more countries, according to GameSpot.
Below is a video with more additional information regarding Niantic's announcement.
