Pokévision Forced to Shut Down
Last week, Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke, the creator of Pokémon GO, hinted that certain services that helped players locate Pokémon creatures within the game may be shut down. Well, he didn’t wait long to act. Yesterday, one of the more popular services, Pokévision.com said that it was “currently unavailable.”
According to Forbes, when asked over the phone if the site would be down indefinitely, Pokévision cofounder Yangcheng Liu simply responded “it possibly could be.” He declined to comment further and would not say if the company threatened legal action against him or his site.
The Pokévision Twitter accounted tweeted the following:
Hey guys. We wish we had some news for you
At this moment, we are respecting Niantic and Nintendo’s wishes.
Will keep you guys posted
<3
— Pokevision (@PokeVisionGo) July 31, 2016
Another Pokémon-locating service, PokeHound.com, displayed a cryptic message on its website noting that “We tried our best 🙁 – Check Twitter for updates.” The company then shut down its Twitter account over the weekend.
After launching what would become the most popular mobile game of all time, Niantic is cracking down on services that users employed to achieve the main goal of “catching them all.”
In Pokémon GO, players move about the physical world and try to capture virtual monsters that appear on their smartphones. Because of glitches and heavy use, an in-game feature that helped players locate creatures had long remained broken, allowing entrepreneurs to build apps and sites that could tell when certain Pokémon would appear in a given location and for how long.
Did you use Pokévision? What are your thoughts on this? Tell us in the comments below.