It’s been almost a year now since non-expat Americans were able to play Niantic’s Pokemon Go. While we’re naturally seeing birthday rumors, the game’s unique position in gaming has led to continued lawsuit issues over AR and Niantic’s struggle with moderating its content.
Rumors of a shiny Pikachu are being linked with both a brief “one-year anniversary” line of code that was recently datamined and news that Niantic will release a “rare Pikachu” at ACM Siggraph.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit between Candy LAB AR and Milwaukee County that we previously reported has led to the two sides exchanging words, none more damning than those of the county:
“[Candy Lab AR’s game, Texas Rope’em,]Â has no storylines, no characters, no plot and no dialogue. The player simply views randomly generated cards and travels to locations to get more. That is not the type of speech that demands First Amendment safeguards.”
Milwaukee County further claims the game is an illegal form of gambling that isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Pokemon Go just barely contains story, characters, plot, and dialogue limited to its extremely limited tutorial and UI options. However, the gambling aspect even with POGO isn’t entirely off considering what HearthStone has recently done in China in terms of not revealing the odds on cash-bought containers.
As we’ve previously written in a feature on lockboxes and gambling, several Asian countries are at least trying to curb players’ habits by requiring this, though Texas Rope’em is more of a direct reference than PoGO‘s incubators.
Finally, a POGOÂ player trying to help fellow trainers asked Niantic to slightly move a local gym. Niantic representatives asked for more information before simply deleting the gym, contrary to the player’s request, a move that may actually scare players away from providing this kind of feedback in the future.
