Niantic shuts down Pokémon Go trading on hearing one player got 100 'lucky' trades

[Cal Jeffrey]

In a nutshell: Lucky Pokémon are ultra-rare monsters with better stats and a boon of a 50-percent reduced resource cost to powerups. Earlier this week, a Pokémon Go player posted a picture of 100 lucky Pokémon he gathered in a short time trading with a friend. When Pokémon Go developer Niantic got wind of the news, it halted trading while investigating what caused the glitch.

Getting just one lucky Pokémon is not easy, let alone being granted 100. Nintendo Life points out there are a couple of things that can increase your chances, like owning a monster for more than a year or trading with a "Lucky Friend." This last one might have something to do with the glitch.

Trading with a Lucky Friend guarantees the trade will result in a lucky Pokémon. However, becoming a Lucky Friend is extremely rare. Players only have a five-percent chance once per day at the boon. Even then, it is only supposed to last for one trade.

Redditor AndKrem says that he and his friend were lucky friends when this occurred, but the status never disappeared.

If anyone wonder why it's turned off https://t.co/fV2lBmpB5Q

— G47IX | PokémonGO 🇵🇱 (@g47ix) January 20, 2022

"We were both lucky friends when we started and still are. The status as lucky friends didn't disappear and every trade turned out to be a lucky trade," the lucky trader said in the r/TheSilphRoad subreddit.

It sounds like maybe it was a super rare occurrence where both friends got the lucky status simultaneously, and the game didn't know how to handle the situation, but that's just speculation on my part.

Players were a bit unpleased at hearing Niantic shut down trading. One player pointed out how quickly Niantic reacted to a post in an unofficial Pokémon subreddit but is slow to fix bugs posted through official channels.

"[It's] just funny to me how they CLEARLY read Reddit but do NOTHING promptly fix other issues or listen to our recommendations," said StevensDs.

Some were quick to respond that it's always like that when developers find a glitch that affects their profits.

Other players had a more practical lean on Niantic's haste.

"Is nice that a single person benefitted from something and they immediately batten down the hatches. Now they have a sample size of 1 for a bug, so reproducing it is gonna be difficult," said a Kotaku reader. "If it were me, I would've waited until [Redditors] would inevitably post the steps on how to get the bug to happen before taking trading down. Cause now you have free repro steps."

Shutting down trading within a game is not unprecedented. Shortly after Amazon's bug-ridden New World launch, it shut down the games economy controls over a gold duplication glitch. It even went a step further by threatening any players who exploited the bug.

It appears that in this case, Niantic stopped trading before anyone else could exploit the glitch, and it's doubtful it will punish the lucky traders that unexpectedly happened upon it. However, the developer has not commented further on the situation.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/93086-niantic-shuts-down-pokmon-go-trading-hearing-one.html

 

[kiwigraeme]

I took up Pokemon Go with my son - only carried on near end to help "friends' - get xp bonuses if under level 40.
I didn't care for all the stuff they were adding - it was just too controlled and prescribe, grindy - too many Pokémon locked behind events , or certain activities .
Plus in my suburb had some real dumb players - one guy I helped a lot when low level - never kicked him out of a gym till he got daily quota . Yet later - when I kicked him out in morning walking dogs ( he now has daily quota - as overnight in gym ) - he kicks me out 15 minutes later ( I hate nasty dumb players ) - so I leave him in there for 8 days collecting nothing - carries on - he never learnt - he only backed off from my stomping him out 15 minutes later - or golden raspberry trick - I have 500 those unused - 8 million dust unused .
If you play Pokemon Go the 3 factions/colours WORK TOGETHER in local community gyms .
Anyway sort of silly if I may need to throw 7 times to catch a 95% chance pokemon (heavy green , spin , great ) at level 41 .
That I never saw an unknown on my radar , that you can't catch a legendary out and about .
That's all I wanted - a simple catching game - with the chance no matter how small to catch Every Pokemon. yes I understand people spoofed and cheated .
If became a drag - even 20 minutes a day - I lived on a Stop - so can do it while coffee brewed

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I never got into Go. The lack of traditional battles, item use, trading, it all felt like the typical freemium BS designed to make you spend as much money as possible to skip the artificial grind, but with having to walk all over the place on top, and screw you if you dont live in a major city, rattata and pidgey is all you get!

It just felt like an alpha concept pushed into a full game. A full AR pokemon game would be lit. This was more of a smoldering ember.