Niantic CEO Comments On Third-Party Pokemon Go Shortcuts

Egg-hatching shortcuts are apparently fine, while third-party apps are not.

As popular as it has become over the past few weeks, there’s still quite a few things that players aren’t happy about in Niantic Labs’ popular Pokemon Go mobile game. This has lead some players to devise third-party solutions to get around some of the game’s more frustrating aspects, such as its spotty distance tracking and the infamous three-steps glitch. Niantic’s CEO John Hanke was recently asked about these third-party solutions, and his answers were definitely interesting to say the least.

In a recent interview with Forbes Magazine, Hanke was asked about a number of different elements in regards to Pokemon Go, and naturally the subject of creative third-party solutions came up. When asked about the many clever ways which players are using to “cheat” the game’s egg-hatching system (a system through which players can hatch Pokemon eggs by walking a certain distance) by strapping their phones to things like toy trains and turntables, Hanke took a pretty lax stance:

“Well that’s kind of cheating, but it’s kind of creative and funny too, so I don’t really mind it. He’s only cheating himself.”

However, Hanke also made it clear that he’s not a fan of third-party apps and web services like Poke Radar which allow users to more accurately pinpoint where exactly specific Pokemon can be found:

“Yeah, I don’t really like that. Not a fan. We have priorities right now but they might find in the future that those things may not work. People are only hurting themselves because it takes some fun out of the game. People are hacking around trying to take data out of our system and that’s against our terms of service.”

Fans have taken issue with Hanke’s derision of third-party apps, pointing to the fact that Niantic still hasn’t fixed the three-step glitch (a glitch that makes all nearby Pokemon appear as if they’re much farther away than they actually are). which pretty much forces players to utilizes such apps if they want to track down a specific Pokemon’s whereabouts. The glitch first appeared over a week ago and has yet to be directly addressed by Niantic even though it is affecting large numbers of the Pokemon Go playerbase. Overall, until the game has been patched accordingly, third-party solutions will continue to crop up.

Source: Forbes

While you wait for Niantic to finally release a fix for the three-step glitch, be sure to read some of our latest Indie Obscura news coverage such as Hyper Light Drifter’s recent console release, We Happy Few’s transition into Early Access across various platforms, and the latest release delay of No Man’s Sky on PC.

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