‘Pokémon GO’ Trading Feature Code Removed From 0.57.2 Android Update; Could Niantic Be Revising It For Launch?
Niantic Labs and The Pokémon Company may have lured “Pokémon GO” players to revisit the mobile game this weekend through the arrival of the Gen 2 Update, but this isn’t enough to keep Trainers busy for long. Ever since Niantic CEO John Hanke told TechCrunch last September about the big plans they have for the Pokémon mobile app, many players started to patiently wait for a major update that would bring Trading and PvP Battles to the game.
Five months later and here we are, still waiting for the features that would complete the “Pokémon GO” gaming experience. And now, there’s another reason to believe that the features won’t arrive anytime soon, especially when taking about Pokémon Trading. It was found out over the weekend that Niantic removed the code for the Trading feature from the latest 0.57.2 update of the game’s Android app.
Pokémon GO Hub discovered last Sunday that the beta code for Trading was nowhere to be found in the 0.57.2 update Niantic rolled out last Thursday. Data miners learned that the numeric values and the entire mock-up of the Trading feature’s interface have all been erased.
Though this news could be taken negatively by Trainers, Pokémon GO Hub insists it does not indicate that Niantic won’t bring the highly anticipated feature to the game. This could just be Niantic removing unused codes and optimizing the game for both the server and the clients.
Many players positively responded to the news via Reddit. User 3dsgeek333 wrote: “It’s likely that they are going to revise it for the future. That code was from beta, so it may be outdated compared to the current trading development.”
“They probably wanted trading to be in the base game but were obviously unable to get it in for the summer 2016 deadline they had, which was the best time to release it for the 20th anniversary,” another Reddit user with the handle luke4ario opined. ”Now that they've had time to go over it they clearly thought there was a better way to do it so have started from scratch. Hanke has said that trading is coming so hopefully we won't have long to wait!”
Last week, Hanke once again teased about the addition of PvP and Trading into the game, but he still failed to give specific dates. In his Waypoint interview, Niantic’s CEO simply said that both features are “on the way” after admitting that at least one of the two would have debuted with the game if the servers hadn’t been so sketchy.
“It's going to be done soon,” Hanke added. “It is what it is. I'll take the massive wave of hysteria we enjoyed, and just deal with the fact that it's caused us to take a bit longer to get the rest of the features up. We're really happy to make our users happy.”
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