Pokemon Go has been a topic of discussion in many circles for weeks now and this past weekend saw many opinions turn to the negative based on their latest update. We’ve been waiting to see if Niantic would respond to the immense backlash and they finally have.
Ever since the new update went live the other day, fans have been very angry with Niantic over the changes to Pokemon Go. This included the removal of the 3-step footprint, even though it was broken already, and making third party tracking apps unable to be used. The fact that Niantic had nothing to say about the complaints made the situation worse, but their response finally came tonight.
As posted to the official Pokemon Go Facebook page, Niantic explained that the reason that the 3-step tracker was removed in this update was so that they could improve on the “underlying design.” They said that while people enjoyed the original way that was available for a couple weeks before breaking, they did not meet their “underlying product goals” and that they would keep us posted as they worked on it.
Niantic also addressed their limited access to third-party trackers like PokeVision, in which they said they did so because they were “interfering with our ability to maintain quality of service.” They continued to say that the roll out so far has been “interesting” and they are striving to continue that rollout to other areas, including Brazil. After discussing these two issues specifically, they also had the following to say in general about the update and moving forward.
“We have read your posts and emails and we hear the frustration from folks in places where we haven’t launched yet, and from those of you who miss these features. We want you to know that we have been working crazy hours to keep the game running as we continue to launch globally. If you haven’t heard us Tweeting much it’s because we’ve been heads down working on the game. But we’ll do our best going forward to keep you posted on what’s going on.”
This was a pretty lame response overall considering how angry some gamers are with the changes, especially with the tracker limiting reason sounding quite stupid. Hopefully they will work towards fixing the tracker soon or they will lose a lot of fans of the game, but they definitely need to keep up the dialogue with fans in the meantime to avoid such backlash in the future.
