Earlier in the week, one Pokemon GO player came forward to claim that developer Niantic had gifted her a rare legendary Pokemon (Articuno).
This caused an uproar in the Pokemon GO community, as fans around the world insisted this woman was full of crap – Niantic would never just give someone an Articuno, right?
Nevertheless, Kait Covey of Ohio seemed pretty adamant that her story and her Pokemon were both legit, and even posted a video with her friend to show the ‘mon off.
Whether it was legit or not is now a moot point, as Niantic has now confirmed that some legendary Pokemon did accidentally find their way into the game – the developer then proceeded to take these Pokemon away from their owners.
Niantic said:
We recently noticed that a few Legendary Pokemon got into a few accounts when they shouldn’t have.
To preserve the game’s integrity and as a measure of fairness, we have rectified the situation and revoked the legendary Pokemon from the Trainers’ accounts.
Okay, fair enough if you want to keep the game balanced for everyone, but can you imagine how salty you’d be if you got a legendary Pokemon and then had it snatched away from you?
This is just another example in a long line of dick moves from Niantic recently.
I can’t imagine they’re doing it on purpose, I just don’t think they were ready to handle a franchise as massive as Pokemon.
Then again, maybe the moral of the story is that if you get a legendary Pokemon you know you shouldn’t have, maybe don’t brag about it on the internet?
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.