Pokemon Go patch disables spawns while driving

Apparently some players weren't being truthful when they said they were playing as a passenger.

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While a lot of players have moved on from the immensely successful Pokemon Go, there are still quite a few trying to catch them all. And some continue you to do it in ways that are not necessarily safe to themselves or others. Developer Niantic Labs' latest patch for the game hopes to eliminate some of that.

Numerous accidents and injuries have resulted from players using the game while driving, and the new patch actually disabes Pokemon spawns if the player is traveling more than 30 miles per hour. A previous patch had added a check that, if the game detected a high speed, asked if the player was a passenger, Some players continued to say yes, even though they were actually behind the wheel. Go figure.

The bad part is that the patch now penalizes folks who were legitimately a passenger, or playing while on public transit. But safety comes first.

The patch, which also allowed players to take more Pokemon into a friendly gym for training and to beef up its defense, is already out in the wild. No need to try to catch this one, as your mobile device likely did it automatcially.

Contributing Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    October 19, 2016 7:25 AM

    John Keefer posted a new article, Pokemon Go patch disables spawns while driving

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      October 19, 2016 8:02 AM

      My daughter will be so sad. She loved scanned for Pokemon while we drive around.

      I don't understand why people insist on being so irresponsible with phones + driving.

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        October 19, 2016 8:18 AM

        Because people are stupid, inconsiderate fucksticks.

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          October 19, 2016 8:19 AM

          Also, irresponsible. I left that one out.

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        October 19, 2016 9:47 AM

        It's not like it started with this game. People have been dumb with cell phones in cars since they got one.

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          October 19, 2016 10:01 AM

          All the people who were playing Go while driving will now go back to texting, checking Instagram, and sending Snapchats while driving. Ball is just out of Niantic's court for potential liability, I guess.

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      October 19, 2016 8:17 AM

      Any one have an additional source for this (has it been confirmed?)

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      October 19, 2016 8:19 AM

      will it fix my toon running around 50 meters in every direction when I load it up and then it thinks I'm driving?

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        October 19, 2016 9:50 AM

        That's just crappy GPS on your phone.. mine doesn't do that on IPhone6.

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          October 19, 2016 9:51 AM

          does it all the time here, in a multi-wifi-node environment. if you are purely on your mobile carrier's connection, perhaps wifi turned off entirely, it doesn't seem to be too bad.

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          October 19, 2016 10:44 AM

          Disagree. (I'm level 31 in PokemonGo, so I have some "time" into the game). My iPhone 6S is a disaster even outdoors sometimes. Indoors, I get the warning that I am going too fast and to verify that I'm just a passenger.

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            October 19, 2016 10:46 AM

            wow i haven't seen that at home.. it drifts a few feet sometimes but not much. At work I get no GPS signal and it disables the game completely.

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      October 19, 2016 8:22 AM

      Are you fucking kidding me...

      Will this fix it reading me as driving whenever I pull up the app after walking around for a couple minutes?

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        October 19, 2016 9:01 AM

        No. But now when it does that Pokemon won't spawn for you until you restart the app.

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      October 19, 2016 9:37 AM

      [deleted]

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      October 19, 2016 9:39 AM

      RELATED SIDEJACK:

      Got this today in my spambox

      "You're not a sexless pokemon You are a powerful sex-transformer [link]"

      Well then...

    • reply
      October 19, 2016 9:45 AM

      [deleted]

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      October 19, 2016 9:48 AM

      I get they had to combat bots like crazy, and ban the third party sites trying to make money off their game.... buuuuuuuuttttttttt... why doesn't niantic integrate those features? I don't understand their logic at this point. they have closed off everything external, but are adding nothing internally.

      they had lightning in a bottle and are not handling this well at all.

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      October 19, 2016 10:23 AM

      While Niantic seems to be fucking up Pokemon more and more, they're not molesting INGRESS too badly! We have another round of Anomaly games coming up on November 12th, "Via Noir". http://ingress.com/events/

      I just had a 10 minute PVP battle in my offices parking lot to defend a few large fields I had coming off my desk portal. Ingress >>>> PokeNope.

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      October 19, 2016 11:17 AM

      I'm still playing for some reason but this game is so god damn boring. I don't understand why they aren't quicker to improve and add things to the game. Even the gyms now are filled to level 10 and I don't have the time to waste on that. I'm level 25 now and basically all I do is spin pokestops and occasionally evolve things. I should be waiting to evolve for when I use a lucky egg but I'm just so god damn bored with this. It's worse then cookie clicker.

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        October 19, 2016 1:05 PM

        yah I'm done with it.. I'd have to spends hours a day playing this to get up to the point where I'd be able to do anything meaningful as far as taking over gyms, ect...

        All I see around my home and work are the same old Pokemon and I'm not about to drive to multiple cities, states, ect... The fact the Niantic has shutdown the tracking websites was kinda the nail in the coffin. At least with that I was able to find some rare ones to catch. But now with the useless in-game tracking feature it's pretty much impossible.

        Not to mention there just isn't much in the way of game play...

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          October 19, 2016 1:08 PM

          I really don't understand why they don't spin up their own tracking website or app. The in-game stuff simply is not fast enough nor accurate enough for people, given they got a taste of a city-wide data dump complete with TIMERS... so, why doesn't niantic just add that on their own portal?

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