Pokémon Go players furious at updates

Pokémon Go players have reacted angrily to the first update for the hugely popular mobile app, with many now arguing it has been made much harder to catch the digital creatures as a result.

Developer Niantic has issued an update which added some much-anticipated features — including the ability to re-customise the appearance of your character and the re-balancing of some Pokémon characters’ powers in order to make the game more competitive.

However, many users have taken to social media to express their frustration that the app’s Pokémon tracking tool has been completely removed, after it failed in the first days of the app’s launch.

The three-step counter gave an indication of how close Pokémon were by showing between one and three footprints beneath each creature’s icon — more steps indicating a greater distance away.

Twitter user @Swifongaming said: “So to fix the ‘three step glitch’ @PokemonGoApp remove the steps all together. How are we supposed to track where the Pokmon are?”

Popular third-party tracking service PokéVision, which showed the location of nearby Pokémon plotted on a map, also appears to have been shut down, with the website tweeting from its associated Twitter account that it was “respecting Niantic and Nintendo’s wishes”.

Niantic is yet to comment on the update.

Pokémon Go also took steps to address some of the safety concerns surrounding the app, with the update adding alerts when the game is opened which remind players not to enter “dangerous areas” while playing after four teenagers in Wiltshire became lost in a mine while using the app.

There have also been reports in Japan of gamers entering the exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant in search of Pokémon, which is still deemed a disaster zone after the 2011 reactor meltdown.