Pokemon Go developer Niantic has seemingly made the questionable decision to outright kill Pokemon Go with the game’s latest update, removing a plethora of core features along with making some thoroughly backwards decisions that are contributing to its steady downfall.
In the latest update, issued over this past weekend, Niantic decided to outright remove the game’s Steps feature. Steps had previously been used to track Pokemon in the game, though eventually this feature was disabled as a result of its frequent server issues. While many believed that Steps would eventually be turned back on as Pokemon Go’s server issues became less prominent, Niantic has instead decided to remove them altogether. Not only this, but the developer also shut down Pokevision.com, a third-party site that helped players track Pokemon, ensuring that Pokemon Go is now little more than a game of chance.
If eradicating the whole act of Pokemon hunting from a game that revolves around Pokemon hunting wasn’t ludicrous enough, Niantic has gone a few steps further by also removing the extra XP players received from accurately throwing their Pokeballs at Pokemon, while also reducing the player’s scanning area from 100 meters to 70 meters. This means that you’re less likely to encounter Pokemon while on your travels, and it’s now more awkward to access Pokestops and Gyms. Add into that the removal of the game’s Battery Saving mode, and there’s now a heap of reasons why Pokemon Go is a significantly worse game than it was just a few days ago.
Though it may sound a little hyperbolic to suggest that Niantic have killed their super popular game with this latest update, with its player count plummeting and users growing increasingly frustrated with its plethora of problems, it seems inevitable that this latest move will prove to be a major blow for Pokemon Go. Removing gameplay features and removing its core feature is a disastrous step backwards for the game, with its developers routinely failing to adequately communicate with their players in the wake of such major changes. Though Pokemon Go started out as one of the biggest success stories in the year, it is now swiftly shaping up to be one of its biggest disasters, too.
