In Pokémon GO players can finally challenge each other to battles. However, children are locked out of player-versus-player battles.
What happened? In Pokémon GO, players with a child account are locked out of most new PvP features. While they can challenge the team leaders, they cannot compete against other players .
What are child accounts? Child accounts are for players under 13 years old and are meant to protect them. Niantic recommends parents use the safety portal “Niantic Kids”. There, they can monitor their children’s playtime and enable or disable certain features.
Children cannot battle against other players
Here’s the reason: Children could come into direct contact with potentially much older and unfamiliar people for the new PvP battles. Therefore, Niantic has completely blocked the feature for child accounts.
However, it is still possible for children to fight against the leaders of the three teams in Pokémon GO. These are virtual NPC characters in the game that provide trainers with new tasks among other things. For this, they receive Stardust and have a chance for rare items every day.
This is how players react to the parental controls
There is understanding: Players understand that Niantic implements these protective measures for children. They do not want children exposed to any dangers.
Some see problems: Other players fear that Niantic would encourage parents to cheat on their children’s age information. After all, children would have either no or only limited access to some features of the game . In this way, children cannot trade with other players or have no access to the “friends feature”.
Suggestions from the community: Some players suggest slightly limiting the child protection. For example, it should be possible for parents to unlock certain trusted individuals in Pokémon GO for their children. Then younger players would also have a chance to play with peers or relatives.
The new PvP feature currently has some issues: Pokémon GO: These are the bugs in PvP – Here’s how to get around them
