Niantic has a fresh blog post out (communication! yay!) that takes a stab at explaining just why it put the kibosh on third-party Pokemon Go apps, maps, and trackers last weekend and again with an API change yesterday. The short version? It’s all about resources.
“[A]ggressive efforts by third parties to access [the] servers outside of the […]Â client” were hindering Niantic’s ability to roll out the game to new territories, like Brazil, says the studio. While some of the apps were innocuous, the cumulative effect was to suck up server resources needed by players.
“In addition to hampering our ability to bring Pokémon GO to new markets, dealing with this issue also has opportunity cost. Developers have to spend time controlling this problem vs. building new features. It’s worth noting that some of the tools used to access servers to scrape data have also served as platforms for bots and cheating which negatively impact all Trainers. There is a range of motives here from blatant commercial ventures to enthusiastic fans but the negative impact on game resources is the same. Of course, there are also outright hackers out there attempting to break into systems, hijack social media accounts, and even bring down the service. Some of them have posted publicly about their attempts.”
Bug fixes are on the way too:
Trainers, a new bug affecting throw accuracy increases the odds of escape and omits the XP bonus. We are working on a fix, stay tuned…
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) August 4, 2016
