Pokevision Founder Pens Open Letter to Niantic

Pokevision, as we spoke earlier, was shut down by Niantic, causing an outcry among fans of the third-party software, fans of Pokemon Go, and people who just plain like outcries, god bless em'. Well, after being addressed vaguely by Pokemon Go's creators over Facebook, the creators of Pokevision decided to speak directly to Pokemon Go in an open letter asking the company to reconsider: for their own good.
The whole letter is here, and big, and absolutely worth a read, but I've included some highlights below.

"We made Pokevision not to “cheat.” We made it so that we can have a temporary relief to the in-game tracker that we were told was broken. John, at SDCC, you said that you guys were working on “fixing the in-game tracker.” This made everyone believe that this was coming sometime soon. We saw Pokevision as a stop gap to this — and we had every intention in closing it down the minute that Pokemon Go’s own tracker restored functionality.

As we waited more than 2 and a half weeks, the tracker was still not fixed. We noticed more and more of our friends leave the game; the only way I — and I know experiences vary here — could convince them to play was show them Pokevision, and say that “Hey, here’s a temporary remedy to the tracking issue — we’re still optimistic that Pokemon Go’s tracker will be fixed soon!”

As almost 3 weeks have passed by, the in-game tracker is broken. People had a temporary solution in Pokevision, but we knew, and everyone else knew, this wouldn’t be permanent. We didn’t make Pokevision to spite you, Niantic — we made it so that we can keep everyone playing while we wait patiently. We want to keep sharing our Pokemon stories with everyone else. How many people in the world have gotten the chance to have a serious conversation about POKEMON with their parents for the first time? How many of us got to talk about Pokemon like it was socially acceptable in any context? It’s captured all of our hearts and imaginations, I cannot stress that enough.

After 3 weeks though, we started seeing that you guys seemed to not want to talk to us (the players). Pokevision, at this time has grown to almost 50M unique users, and 11 million daily.

Half of the player base of Pokemon Go stopped by — and they didn’t do so to “cheat.” The game was simply too unbearable to play in its current state for many (note: many, not all). The main attraction wasn’t that they got to have an advantage with Pokevision, the main attraction was that it allowed them to play Pokemon Go more. This is what everyone wants — to play Pokemon Go more.

After disabling the in-game tracker and Pokevision, the ratings on iOs and Android Google Play store went from 4.0 stars to 1.0–1.5. I am only one person, I admit that my sole opinion is not important, but what about the countless players begging for the game to be restored to its former state? I may be biased in saying that Pokevision being down had an impact on the amount of negative ratings, refund requests and outcry on social media — but could it be true? Nothing has changed between the time the in-game tracker broke and Pokevision went down. Could it just be possible that the tracker — no matter if Pokevision made it, or Niantic made it, is something that players desperately NEED — not want, but NEED — in order to play the game?"

He goes on. It's magnificently written, heartfelt, and clearly came from a position of love for the game. The question, now, is if the folks at Niantic are willing to listen. I said in the past that Pokemon Go could save the world--here, I think, we stand at the precipitous on seeing if they're willing to do that, or if their ambitions begin and end at making money.

For their sake--for the fan's sake--I hope they make the right choice.