Niantic, taking incompetence to the next level

Pokemon Go displays not a few bugs. That is to be expected. Software tends to do that. However, in this case we're talking incompetence on an epic scale.

Epic scale here defined as the level at which a company normally would have valid reason to fire the culprits. At least if we were talking a decent company with at least a remnant of a quality policy.


Since the inception of boss raids the gym battling part of the game has been riddled by errors. Network error 2 and error 29. They disable you from succesfully attacking a gym, and the former is keyed to the fact that you won the last boss raid taking place at the gym.

We're not exactly talking rocket science when it comes to locating the bug. The same code that prevents you from joining a boss raid you have already won also prevents you from attacking the gym.

Niantic, however, have failed to do so since July.


Any software producer worth their salt tests their code before releasing it to the public. Any good software producer applies regression testing. It's just common sense. Basically it means that you make certain that what already worked before still works after you have made changes to the code. Changes normally meaning making the next release available to the public.

Let's have a look:

• Boss raid lobby allowed you to see everyone inside -- now broken
• Entering a gym didn't hang the game -- now broken
• Spinning a pokestop gave you a baseline of three items -- now (partially) broken
• Network error 2 left your failed attack with undamaged attackers -- now broken

When you hype up a new feature 'within the next few weeks', and have your customers spend extra money to take part of said feature, it usually a good habit to make the distinction between 'few weeks' and 'few months'. We're still waiting for Mewtwo.

When you utterly fail to create an event you're really not supposed to announce new events that have to be postponed just prior to the announced date. It does make you look like you're utterly unqualified to do events in the first place.

When applying balance tweaks to a game it's possible to apply changes that affect the game with less than a factor two to ten. Whenever you double or half an effect it's no longer called tweaking. We're not even going into cutting an effect by ten.

To summarize:

Niantic has access to a sales departement that works wonders. Some of that personel apparently do commersial programming as a hobby.

It shows.