Developer Niantic goes into detail and explains why services like PokéVision are bad for Pokémon GO .
In recent weeks, there has been a lot of back and forth with Pokémon GO. The desire for PokéVision and similar services to cease their operations caused a stir among players who rated Pokémon GO without trackers as “unplayable”. Niantic shortly thereafter commented on the issues on Facebook and stated that these services impact the quality of the game and negatively affect the player experience. An update to this statement shows how much impact these services have had on the Pokémon GO servers.
The reason behind the ban on tracking services
Keeping a product like Pokémon GO running is not easy, especially due to the high number of daily players, and poses a significant challenge. According to Niantic, this challenge has been exacerbated by various third-party providers. In the statement from Niantic, it says: “As some players may have noticed, Pokémon GO is now also available in Latin America including Brazil. The release of the game in these countries was delayed by third-party providers who aggressively tried to obtain data from Pokémon GO outside of the game. This is against the terms of use.”
Some services have been blocked to prevent them from accessing Pokémon data. Since the ban, there have been many public discussions about why these supposedly “harmless services” could hinder Pokémon GO from being released or playable in more countries. In this graphic, Niantic wants to show players how much server utilization has decreased since the ban on these services.
While the graphic may initially suggest that server load has decreased, without precise numbers, one can only speculate how much the ban on tracking services has affected the servers. However, the stability of Pokémon GO in recent days indicates that the servers are now experiencing fewer issues. Tips and tricks for Pokémon GO can be found in our guide collection.
Cheaters have a harder time now
Some of the services that provided live tracking of wild Pokémon acted as a platform for bots and cheaters, having a negative impact on the game. In some cases, these were simply players who were particularly enthusiastic about the game and wanted to quickly catch all Pokémon. Even if they did not intend to gain an advantage in gyms, the negative impact on server load was too high.
There are still hackers trying to penetrate the Pokémon systems, take over social media accounts, and even disable the game. Niantic does not expect these attempts to stop due to the ban on tracking services. However, they wanted to show players why such measures will continue to be taken in the future to ensure greater server stability.
At the end of the statement, Niantic explicitly reminds players to continue providing their feedback.
Please keep your game ideas and feedback coming. We look forward to getting the game on stable footing so we can begin to work on new features.
As an alternative to the banned apps, you can use our Pokémon GO map. There, the findings are manually entered and rated through a simple system.
