Pokémon Go Showcases released in a messy state despite executive claiming features are tested
It’s going to be another heated day at Niantic’s offices on Monday after a rather terrible weekend for Pokémon Go. Community Day Classic with Squirtle was supposed to set the stage for a new feature in the game, the previously leaked PokéStop Showcases. This fresh type of event, which shows up at PokéStops, challenges you to show off your greatest specimen, beating everyone else in hitting their height and weight goals of the contest. The first round of Showcases focused on Squirtle, just in time for its Community Day Classic, and was supposed to be an easy entry point for players in understanding the fundamentals of this function.
However, things didn’t quite go as planned. An issue with Pokémon Trainer Club prevented many players from logging into the game during the time-limited event, leading them to miss out on all the Squirtle action. Since you can’t create a secondary way to log into the game – such as via Google – while being logged out, anyone affected by the problem was completely out of luck.
Showcases, too, aren’t exactly working as intended – if, indeed, players even have access to the feature. While it officially launched in the first week of July 2023, many Pokémon Go players have yet to see the function in their game. Reports of users suggest that they are seeing the banners informing them about Showcases pop up in the game, but the contests themselves are nowhere to be found almost a week after their initial release.
Other players see the Showcases, but can’t get them to work properly. This Reddit user posted a screenshot from their phone and a picture taken from their friend’s phone, both looking at the same PokéStop Showcase, but seeing completely different leaderboards. Another user reported that they could access a Showcase from a mile away, while a person next to them got an error message trying the same thing, telling them to get closer to the PokéStop.
This messy launch comes only days after Niantic’s Michael Steranka claimed in an interview with Caleb Peng that the studio wants “to test things out and make sure that’s the optimal experience” when it comes to releasing new features in response to the recent radius change debacle. That testing either hasn’t happened at all or whatever QA process was used is simply not enough to guarantee a stable launch – in any case, it looks like Pokémon Go’s players are once again being used as lab rats, which isn’t exactly an optimal experience.
