Some Pokémon Go players in unsupported regions are going to extreme lengths to get the game released in their country.
Brazilian gamers, who claim to be part of the hacker collective OurMine, yesterday hacked into the Twitter account of John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, the company that developed Pokémon Go.
The first tweet, late Sunday afternoon read: "Hey, it's #OurMine, don't worry we are just testing your security, visit our website to upgrade your security!?"
Followed by: "This hack for Brazil! #PokemonGo4Brazil"
The free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game is only available in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia at the moment.
However, this has not stopped people side-loading the app and playing it in other countries, such as South Africa.
Following footsteps
Despite no official date given for a worldwide rollout, the developers of the game updated the app this weekend.
The update has users both happy and upset. It firstly fixes several irritating glitches and makes the app run smoother. It also allows users to re-customise their avatar.
However, it also does away with a tracking feature.
The tracking feature showed which Pokémon were around the user and used footprints to represent how near or far the creature was. The number of footprints decreased as you got closer to it. There are now no footprints.
Gamers took to Twitter to speak out against this decision.
Inferno Omni tweeted: "New Pokémon Go update is stupid. Footsteps made me want to go out and explore and walk. Now it just feels like random encounters."
The company also had to release a statement when some players updated their apps and found themselves back on level one. This meant they had lost all their game data and Pokémon collected.
Niantic explained this was an error on its part and all was not lost.
"In the Pokémon Go update version 1.1.0 (build 31.0), we updated our Google account login system and as a result, you may have inadvertently created another Pokémon Go account by logging in with a different Google e-mail address than the one originally used for the game.
"To resolve this issue, please sign in with the e-mail address originally used to create your Pokémon Go account," the company said.
Closing in on cheaters
This weekend has been busy for the Pokémon Go creators.
Niantic shut down the Web site, Pok'eVision.com, which shows users exactly on a map where Pokémon will spawn.
The shutdown seems to be amicable. Pok'eVision tweeted: "Hey guys. We wish we had some news for you. At this moment, we are respecting Niantic and Nintendo's wishes. Will keep you guys posted."
The Web site was launched two weeks ago and uses Pokémon Go's application programming interface to determine the exact geographical locations of Pokémon and the amount of time each one will remain there.
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