Here's Why Pokemon Go Developer Shut Down PokeVision and Other Tracking Sites

Developer Niantic Labs has published a blog post explaining why it shut down various Pokemon Go tracking sites. The post comes less than week after third-party tracking apps including the popular PokeVision were shut down. As detailed on Niantic's official Pokemon Go website, blocking the third parties who were accessing Niantic's servers freed up a significant amount of resources, some of which helped the developer to proceed with its recent launch of the game in Latin America.

The post read, "We wanted to shed some more light on why we did this and why these seemingly innocuous sites and apps actually hurt our ability to deliver the game to new and existing players." In addition, the developer shared a chart (shown above) which displayed the drop in server resources consumed after the third-party "scrapers" were blocked.

Niantic also explained that developers who spend time dealing with issue have their time taken away from building new features for the game. The post acknowledges other issues, including users cheating and attempts to break into the system, but states that the developer "will continue to take steps to maintain the stability and integrity of the game... We look forward to getting the game on stable footing so we can begin to work on new features."

In recent related Pokemon Go news, Niantic removed a few players' legendary Pokemon after they had mistakenly found their way into the game. The latest game update removed a broken tracking feature, instead of fixing it. This caused an outrage in the community, to which Niantic responded and said it was taken out "in order to improve the underlying design."

The removal of the tracking feature has angered several Pokemon Go players--GameSpot editor Alexa Ray Corriera explains why in this write-up.