last week we reported that someone had “finished” Pokemon Go — with one very important caveat. Out of the original set of 151 creatures, only 142 are currently available in North America. The list excludes Mr. Mime and Farfetch’d — European and Asian exclusives, respectively — as well as a set of monsters known as “legendaries.” In the Game Boy games legendary Pokemon were events, and you’d have to come prepared to capture some of the rarest and exclusive creatures around.
In Pokemon Go, most people just assumed that legendaries would only be available at special events hosted by the game’s developer, Niantic. But late Monday night some folks found a gym held by Articuno, a special, ice-themed bird and mascot for one of the game’s three color-coded teams. One player, Kaitlyn Covey, even posted about having the bird in her local Pokemon Go Facebook group. But since then she’s been met with probing questions from skeptical fans.
There’s more than enough photo and video evidence to confirm that she does, indeed, have the rare Pokemon, but many fans have accused Covey of cheating. She has claimed that she received the special creature for reporting an issue to Niantic, but players have been pressing her for proof, suggesting that it wouldn’t be hard to post a screenshot of the email confirming her story. But Covey’s not the only with an Articuno now. At least one other player has one, but that’s only raised more questions.
The Pokemon Company and Nintendo often hold giveaways at game shops and special locations for legendary or unusual Pokemon, and Niantic hosted massive tournaments for its previous game, Ingress. Fans concluded that, given that each of the three teams had their own legendary mascot that tournaments or other large events might gift one to players based on their team affiliation.
Covey is on Team Mystic, represented by the color blue and, of course, Articuno. This second player, known only by their handle “Ocba,” is on the Yellow Team Instinct, which, according to many fan theories shouldn’t be possible. It’s been assumed that you could only obtain one of the three birds, and since trading Pokemon between players (a highly-anticipated feature) hasn’t been added just yet, this all seems a bit suspicious. There’s no video showing the Pokedex entry for Articuno.
There’s more than enough photo and video evidence to confirm that she does, indeed, have the rare Pokemon, but many fans have accused Covey of cheating. She has claimed that she received the special creature for reporting an issue to Niantic, but players have been pressing her for proof, suggesting that it wouldn’t be hard to post a screenshot of the email confirming her story. But Covey’s not the only with an Articuno now. At least one other player has one, but that’s only raised more questions.
The Pokemon Company and Nintendo often hold giveaways at game shops and special locations for legendary or unusual Pokemon, and Niantic hosted massive tournaments for its previous game, Ingress. Fans concluded that, given that each of the three teams had their own legendary mascot that tournaments or other large events might gift one to players based on their team affiliation.
Covey is on Team Mystic, represented by the color blue and, of course, Articuno. This second player, known only by their handle “Ocba,” is on the Yellow Team Instinct, which, according to many fan theories shouldn’t be possible. It’s been assumed that you could only obtain one of the three birds, and since trading Pokemon between players (a highly-anticipated feature) hasn’t been added just yet, this all seems a bit suspicious. There’s no video showing the Pokedex entry for Articuno.
At the same time, something like this should be pretty difficult to fake.Pokemon Go is cloud-based, meaning that the Pokemon you’ve caught is stored on Niantic’s servers — not on your device. Since other players have taken screenshots and confirmed that Covey does have Articuno, no one’s quite sure how she could spoof her creature on both her phone and others’ as well. The most likely explanation is that Covey and Ocba have discovered a glitch that allowed them to catch the bird, but at this point, there’s no telling.
We reached out to Niantic for comment and heard back from a PR representative for the developer. The spokesman said, after checking on the issue, that the Articuno “was not from Niantic. it’s either a spoof or someone hacked the game,” but added that the company is still “looking into it” and there aren’t “clear answers at the moment.” While that statement definitively contradicts Covey’s claim that got Articuno as a gift from Niantic, it just adds more questions. Covey and her husband did a live stream showing the Pokemon in-game along with an email apparently from Niantic with a misspelling of the Pokemon’s in-game name — of course raising suspicions.
Given how widespread some glitches are, particularly one that changes a caught Pokemon into another — seemingly at random — it may still be that the Coveys have caught it fair and square and that the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. We also reached out to the Coveys, but until we know more this whole situation is pretty fishy. We will continue to update as we get more information.
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