Niantic, On Unending Crusade To Break Players’ Balls, Shuts Down PokeVision & PokeRadar

Pokévision.com said that it was “currently unavailable.” 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.

-Forbes

Well how about that huh? Niantic was already throwing a metal pipe between their own bike spokes today by rolling out an update that completely renders the already-useless “Nearby” feature of the Pokemon Go app even more useless by essentially disabling it, but now they’re most likely sending out Cease and Desist notices to apps like PokeVision and PokeRadar so now nobody can find anything.

Do I love the idea of Pokemon Go map apps? Absolutely not. I loved that Pokemon Go, when it worked (and I use that term generously), had developed this word-of-mouth culture where people would say “Oh man go check out the beach, there was a Hitmonchan there!” and it’d prompt me to check out new places. Map apps felt like cheating to me, and felt like it was taking the fun and soul out of the game. But if the in-game tracker doesn’t work in the first place? Fuck it, I would’ve downloaded one too.

So here we have a classic case of “You violated the Terms & Conditions”. Niantic’s CEO and creator of Pokemon Go, John Hanke, said last week to FORBES that this was pretty likely to happen, and he’s absolutely within his rights to do it. But could you assholes have waited until your own in-game tracker was fixed before you go shutting down third-party ones?

The object of Pokemon Go is to explore the world and find Pokemon hiding in plain sight. But if there’s no feasible way to do that, we’re just out here chasing our tails and scratching our asses waiting for Krabby’s to pop out. Give us a break Niantic, and cut the shit. You’re breaking our balls here.