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PokeGo

The augmented reality game Pokémon Go launched terminal week to immediate acclaim. Early on reports of game-related bug focused on server issues every bit the programmer, Niantic, struggled to cope with launch-related loads. A very different kind of problem has already raised its head, even so. According to a constabulary report from O'Fallon, Missouri, thieves have used Pokémon Go to target individuals for mugging.

Co-ordinate to the police written report, the thieves used a beacon to attract individuals to a specific Pokéstop. Pokéstops are areas of interest where players can observe items of interest. These are typically the best places to find Pokémon and the chances of encountering a Pokémon at a Pokéstop can be increased if a player attaches a Lure to that specific location. Presumably that's what the muggers did, since the police refer to a "beacon" beingness used to gather multiple victims in a parking lot (the full police Facebook post is below):

Pokelice

After making an initial post, the O'Fallon PD announced information technology had arrested the suspects and would charge them with robbery and armed criminal action.

What is Pokémon Go, anyway?

For those of yous who haven't heard of the game already, Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game in which you attempt to capture digital creatures (Pokémon) in the real globe. Pokémon tend to favor specific areas — Water-blazon Pokémon are bachelor virtually lakes, oceans, and rivers, while buildings might have Steel-type Pokémon, and a cemetery might take Ghost, Fairy, and Night-types. Obviously there are some practical limitations to this — Niantic (probably) isn't going to send people scouting agile volcanoes, toxic waste dumps, or power stations hunting for burn down, toxicant, or electrical Pokémon types.

Pokemon_Go_screenshot

Capturing a Pokemon in AR fashion. Image by Wikipedia

Pokémon Go is built using a nifty deal of information from Niantic's other AR game, Ingress. As Polygon details, Niantic used data gathered by Ingress players to make up one's mind which landmarks, buildings, and absurd areas in your local surroundings should be used for Pokéstops and the similar. Some of this data is of questionable accuracy; at that place accept already been reports of players inbound areas not intended for the public, including military installations and private property. Players earn XP through successfully capturing wild Pokémon (through a capture mini-game rather than a standard battle) — Polygon has more information on how the game mechanics work also.

While Ingress was ane of the get-go open up-globe AR titles, Pokémon Go has already exploded past Ingress at its peak player base of operations. With new types of games come up new types of issues. At Kotaku, Omar Akil wrote an essay about how playing Pokémon Go as a black homo could cause problems that white players are unlikely to see. The idea that an augmented reality game could be used to mug people at gunpoint probably isn't something that occurred to Niantic, merely conspicuously someone had the idea — we'll take to wait and run into if such issues require the developer to make changes to the championship or not.