YouTuber Brandon Tan is likely known to many players of Pokémon GO, and for many he is even considered the best trainer in the world. He has now reached the limit for experience points. However, this led to a strange bug.
Who is that? BrandonTan91 is a Pokémon GO player and YouTuber. Many players see him as the best trainer in the world. He was the first player to exceed the mark of one billion experience points and is known for completing around 50 raids a day.
However, he is not uncontroversial. In 2018, Brandon offered a capture service in which other players sent him their account information so that he could catch certain Pokémon for a fee. He also openly admitted to having multiple accounts, which violates the rules set by developer Niantic. At one point, he was even banned.
Now he is presumably the first player to have reached the limit for maximum experience points. However, the result was different than Brandon expected. When he hit the limit, an error occurred that left him quite confused, as he states in his video: “I broke Pokémon GO.”
Suddenly with over 2 billion XP in the negative
What happened? As he states in his video, Brandon recently reached the XP cap of around 2.1 billion experience points. More specifically: at 2.147.483.647 XP.
How do we know that this is the limit? There is no official number from Niantic regarding this. But since he reached the limit, his XP account is suddenly in the negative. Specifically, at minus around 2.1 billion XP. Every time he completes an activity that earns XP now, the negative decreases by the corresponding amount.
In other words: to again reach the XP maximum, he would need to collect over 4 billion experience points. It took him nearly 5 years to reach the current cap.
How could this error occur? As Brandon Tan shows in his video, the number 2.147.483.647 is indeed not a coincidence. Developer Niantic apparently built a 32-bit integer into Pokémon GO that counts certain values, such as experience points.
Such integers are used in many games and other programs. But the highest number that a 32-bit integer can represent is 2.147.483.647. Reaching this value in Pokémon GO has likely led to this error.
An integer is roughly a data type in computer science that can display a certain number. The maximum is therefore 2(n-1)-1. In a 32-bit system, this corresponds to 231-1 – or 2.147.483.647. In computer science, counting starts at 0, not 1, which is why 1 is subtracted.
YouTube had fun with 32-bit integer in 2014
What happened? Many of you may remember the then Korean hit “Gangnam Style” by Psy. This video caused YouTube’s viewer count to go crazy in 2014 at a viewer number of 2.147.483.647 .
As a result, YouTube allegedly had to replace the 32-bit integer of the then system with a 64-bit integer that can track numbers up to a value of 9.223.372.036.854.775.808.
However, it later turned out that it was merely a deliberately placed Easter egg by YouTube. They had already switched the integer from 32-bit to 64-bit months earlier (via variety.com). Perhaps developer Niantic can solve the problem with a similar upgrade.
What do you think about this story? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments.
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