Niantic Has Removed All Legendary Pokemon from Pokemon GO Accounts for "Fairness"

[ffronw]

Niantic Has Removed All Legendary Pokemon from Pokemon GO Accounts for "Fairness"

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1340/1340456.jpgIf you had a Pokemon GO legendary on your account, it's been removed to keep the game fair, Niantic says.

The Pokemon GO community has been abuzz this week with the news that someone caught a legendary Articuno. There were some claims that they could have only done so by cheating, but Niantic has now told GameSpot [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/pokemon-go-dev-takes-away-players-legendaries-citi/1100-6442332/] that a few legendaries have accidentally made their way into the game. Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends.

As the appearance of the legendary Pokemon was unintentional, Niantic has revoked them from the accounts of the trainers who caught them. The company told GameSpot,

"We recently noticed that a few Legendary Pokemon got into a few accounts when they shouldn't have. To preserve the game's integrity and as a measure of fairness, we have rectified the situation and revoked the legendary Pokemon from the Trainers' accounts."

There's no word on if there was any compensation offered to those who had Pokemon removed, but regardless, it's another PR hit for Niantic. They've already had the fallout from removing tracking both in-game and on third-party sites [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/168069-Niantic-Disables-Pokemon-GO-Tracking-Shuts-Down-Third-Party-Tracking-Sites] to deal with, and this is likely not helping in their quest to keep players happy.

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[Fappy]

Who gives a shit if a few people got it? Just let them have it. It's not like this game is really a viable means of competition, anyway. Talk about delusional.

 

[Poetic Nova]

How long before this Pokemon Go fad will crash and burn due to bad decisions by Niantic?

 

[WarpedMind]

Niantic is really trying their very hardest to kill Pokemon Go.

 

[TelosSupreme]

I thought the whole point was to be the very best, like no one ever was. Apparently that's just not fair. Cry me a river.

This is gonna be a fad faster than I originally thought. All it takes is some really short-sighted decisions from a company that doesn't actually seem to know what it's players want.

 

[Sonicron]

It's like they're running an experiment to see how quickly you can piss away an entire ocean of goodwill.

 

[LysanderNemoinis]

This sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do in this day and age, because this is how society functions. Everyone is supposed to be equal and rather than everyone having the same shot to do be better, we all have to be the same and push down those who rise up.

 

[thewatergamer]

Yeah...I mean its not like the games that Pokemon Go is based on have pokemon that are stronger than others, I mean everyone knows that a Weedle can hold up just fine against an Ho-Oh haha! Seriously? The mainstream pokemon games are much more competitive but they allow players to have objectively stronger pokemon by a LONGSHOT, but Pokemon Go? Oh nonononono we can't have that!

 

[Raioken18]

So... they accidentally gave Articuno to a few people, then took it back. That is a massive no-no.
If the players didn't cheat, if it's Niantic's fault then they went in the wrong direction.

A better option, admit that mistakes were made, allow the trainers to keep that pokemon,
then announce an early giveaway and release Articuno first through smaller events or just give a release date for it.
That way other players will know that it is coming eventually and you aren't punishing players who didn't cheat.

 

[Clankenbeard]

I don't care if they should never have made it into the accounts. Once they're there, you need to live with that action. Hell, you really need to embrace it. I remember reading about the initial release day of Ultima Online in which the King (played by a Dev) made a proclamation to a huge gathering of online players. One of the players tried to kill him with a firewall (or similar) and the King actually died on the spot, His godmode had been mistakenly left off. So, they just went with it and wrote it into the lore. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_British

Okay. I read through that link and I have many things wrong with what I said. But the gist is right. Just look at the gist.

That's the way to handle a game mistake. Don't just pretend it didn't happen. For the record, I do not now own nor have I ever owned any fancy Pok?mon.

 

[List]

If they took legitimately captured pokemon from legit player, that's a huge mistake.

If I were one of those players. That would have given me a massive damage to my motivation stat. I would have stopped playing all together.

Mismanagement and mistakes one after the other. They are turning their game from being an actual thing to being just a fad gone in a few months.

 

[loa]

"Fair"?
So they realize legendaries are overpowered?
What if someone has one later on then and just stomps everything, is that "fair"?

 

[Proto Taco]

This sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do in this day and age, because this is how society functions. Everyone is supposed to be equal and rather than everyone having the same shot to do be better, we all have to be the same and push down those who rise up.

By your logic every drug dealer, warlord, mugger and thief should get a free pass because after all, cheating is fine if it gives you an advantage.

Niantic made the right move here. Preserve the integrity of their big event flagships, improve customer communication, and fix the inciting issues as quickly as possible. Cheating, even by glitch, should NEVER be supported or allowed. If players don't have to earn their advancement then gameplay loses all meaning and sportsmanship.

 

[gigastar]

Well, whos really going to give a toss other than the people who lost thier legendaries?

 

[Saltyk]

Holy shit. How are they messing this up this badly? I know plenty of people who have been losing patience with the recent things done in the update. I'm personally frustrated by the lack of a battery saver option among other things.

This just sounds petty, though.

 

[Saltyk]

This sounds like a perfectly logical thing to do in this day and age, because this is how society functions. Everyone is supposed to be equal and rather than everyone having the same shot to do be better, we all have to be the same and push down those who rise up.

By your logic every drug dealer, warlord, mugger and thief should get a free pass because after all, cheating is fine if it gives you an advantage.

Niantic made the right move here. Preserve the integrity of their big event flagships, improve customer communication, and fix the inciting issues as quickly as possible. Cheating, even by glitch, should NEVER be supported or allowed. If players don't have to earn their advancement then gameplay loses all meaning and sportsmanship.

But, these players didn't cheat. Niantic screwed up and these players got Legendaries. This is punishing someone else for their mistakes.

 

[Guybythestreet]

Taking away legendaries without recompense is a bad play. A strong middle ground action could have been to refund said players a package of xp, ultra balls, evolution candies, etc. and delete the legendary pokemon from their accounts. Wouldn't have been great for everyone but at least those few players wouldn't have to pay for Niantic's mistakes.

 

[MHR]

Other games have this crap happen all the time. MMOs have limited items obtained in weird ways that nobody can ever get ever anymore, even TF2 has items that shouldn't exist but do anyway due to bugs or exploits a few people found. None of those are really removed because they don't damage anything.

PokemonGO is a stupid mobile game where balance isn't nearly close to the top of the list of its problems. So what if a couple people kept the bird, they didn't have to delete it.

People losing their shit over it are worse. Easy come, easy go. Get over it.