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Pokémon GO – Here’s Why There’s no Team GO Rocket Balloons or Grunts

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Have you noticed that there are no Team Go Rocket balloons or grunts in Pokémon GO lately? Lots of players have, as the feature seemed to disappear overnight. In fact, that’s basically what has happened. And if you were trying to beat Arlo, Cliff, Sierra, or Giovanni then the absence is hard felt. To help explain, here’s the reason why there are no Team GO Rocket balloons or grunts in Pokémon GO.

Why are There no Team GO Rocket Balloons or Grunts in Pokémon GO

UPDATE: Team GO Rocket will return soon.

Original Text: Niantic has disabled the spawning of Team GO Rocket balloons and grunts in Pokémon GO, but only temporarily. The announcement was released on April 9th, late at night on the east coast of the US. It reads, “Trainers, while we investigate errors associated with Team GO Rocket encounters, they will be temporarily unavailable. We’ll update here with more information. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

What were those errors? Pokémon GO around the world were encountering freezes on the latest version of the game. While only a small portion of the community was actually on this version, it was rolling out to others more and more all the time. And so, instead of letting players encounter these bugs Niantic has removed the Team GO Rocket team from the game.

Balloons won’t appear every six hours, and Poké Stops won’t feature the usual level of grunt activity. And even if you have your Rocket Radar (regular or Super) equipped, you won’t see Arlo, Cliff, Sierra, or Giovanni (UPDATE: Rocket Radars still work for some, so equip them if you wish). So just hold off on that battle for now, but hopefully you aren’t working on your Special or Timed Research quests for them. Everyone simply has to wait for a new version of the game to release with the bugs patched out.

Hopefully now that you know why there are no Team GO Rocket balloons or grunts in Pokémon GO you can have the patience to wait out this time.


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