Niantic Goes Into Detail Why They Shut Down Pokemon GO Trackers

With the latest update to Pokemon GO, it basically put an end to tracking apps/services such as Pokevision. At that time, Niantic offered a brief explanation as to why they did it, claiming that it interfered with their ability to maintain quality of service, which then prompted Pokevision’s creator to write an open letter explaining his decision behind the launch of the service.

We suppose we could go back and forth but Niantic has decided to once and for all put an end to the speculation with a rather detailed post on their website (via Kotaku). Whether or not you agree with their claims and their justifications is entirely up to you, but hopefully it will at the very least give gamers some insight into what the developers were thinking.

For starters, it seems that the services were eating into the game server’s resources, and according to Niantic, blocking them saw a huge decrease in resources consumed, which in turn allowed the company to ensure a smooth launch in the Latin America market. They also cite opportunity cost as another reason why.

According to them, “Developers have to spend time controlling this problem vs. building new features. It’s worth noting that some of the tools used to access servers to scrape data have also served as platforms for bots and cheating which negatively impact all Trainers. There is a range of motives here from blatant commercial ventures to enthusiastic fans but the negative impact on game resources is the same.”

The developers add, “We don’t expect these attempts to stop. But we do want you to understand why we have taken the steps we have and why we will continue to take steps to maintain the stability and integrity of the game.” So, does this justification make sense to you?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Apps, Pokémon GO