Pokémon Go has deleted several gym and PokéStop locations, after a bug that caused lots of new locations to appear.
As reported by EuroGamer, a recent Pokémon Go bug that emerged last week caused a bunch of new gyms and PokéStop to crop up across the world.
Niantic acknowledged the issue on Wednesday (November 10), saying that “an issue caused a small number of PokéStops and gyms to appear on the map that don’t comply with the Pokémon Go wayspot inclusion rules.
Accepting that players had been excited by all the new additions, Niantic said it would “preserve as many of these locations as possible”.
Some of these PokéStops and Gyms are going to be removed or updated as necessary to preserve the integrity of the gameboard. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. See more about this change here (https://t.co/wpApb4L8MX)
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) November 10, 2021
Since that post, a blog from Niantic says that it has “fixed the issue and rebalanced the wayspot ratio in each area correctly”.
This has resulted in many of the mistakenly-added gyms and PokéStops to be removed, which is an issue because players have been spending time and real money to play at them and progress.
One Twitter user accused Niantic of stealing money from customers, while another replied to the studio’s post questioning if it was “possible that you guys want us to hate the game at some point and stop playing?”
Really disappointed that you've decided to get rid of the new stops/gyms. As a gold gym collector I had already invested time, raid passes, and berries in new gyms and now it was for nothing. 12 gyms I wasted effort on. It's a beneficial glitch so of course it's getting fixed
— Catrina (@detroitangel80) November 10, 2021
Highlighting the issue with players already spending money at the locations, another Twitter user asked the following:
“I have spent a considerable amount of real world money racing to be first to get gold on all the new gyms in my area. Are you considering some kind of compensation for people affected in this way?”
It’s unclear if Niantic plans to refund money spent on now-defunct gyms.
In other news, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises could last as long as James Bond.
The post ‘Pokémon Go’ upsets players by deleting gyms and PokéStop spots appeared first on NME.
