Without screenshots, it would be hard to believe. In Pokémon GO, there was supposedly a bug that briefly gave trainers massive advantages. Shortly after, Niantic disabled trading. We show you the crazy story.
What is it about? In Pokémon GO, trading was disabled on the night of January 20. It is currently unclear how long the deactivation will last and when you can trade again. Although Niantic did not provide clear reasons, a wild story from two trainers apparently shows why the developers need to intervene.
On reddit, a trainer shared screenshots showing how he received an insane number of lucky Pokémon.
Update from January 21: The trading feature is now active again. Niantic apologized on Twitter for the outage and showed their reparations. Until January 24, there is now a trading bonus as an apology.
Traded 100 lucky Pokémon in a row
Here’s what a trainer shows: On reddit, trainer AndKrem wrote on January 20 at 12:20 AM that he recently traded 100 Pokémon with a friend, and all became lucky Pokémon.
He also posted screenshots as proof, showing the lucky Pokémon.
Normally, Pokémon have a low chance of becoming a lucky Pokémon. However, if you are lucky friends with a friendly trainer, you get a guaranteed lucky trade. But that shouldn’t work for multiple trades in a row, especially not for 100.
In this case, however, the lucky friend status did not expire after one trade but remained active. “The lucky friend status did not disappear, and thus every trade became a lucky trade,” explains AndKrem on reddit.
Niantic had to intervene quickly
Here’s how it went on: The thread on reddit gained traction quickly. Many users commented and upvoted. In no time, it became the top post and received significant attention, apparently also from Niantic.
Around 1:30 AM on January 20, the Niantic support team published a statement on Twitter. “Trainers, trading is currently unavailable while we investigate a bug. We apologize for the inconvenience and will post updates here. Thank you for your patience.”
Now we have to wait and see how quickly Niantic can fix the bug. Trading is disabled for now. How quickly the problem can be resolved is unclear. It likely relates to the new update 0.227.1 that is currently rolling out.
How Niantic will compensate trainers for having to do without trading for so long is also still unclear. However, from the past, we know that Niantic usually releases a “compensation” for these issues.
