T-Mobile has a New Poke-Ploy to Get Your Money

Now, we here at GamerzUnite aren't about to turn into a hub for advertising, although, to be completely honest, games journalism as a whole has this irritatingly frequent habit of transforming into a hub for free publicity for certain developers and games. Regardless, we try to keep things classy here, so I'm mindful when I report on anything that could be considered free advertising and I try to limit praise or recommendations to causes I feel are actually worthwhile, such as Humble Bundle and it's charitable efforts.

But sometimes, a company will pull a blatant publicity stunt so 'out there' that I can't help but give some attention to it: such is the case with T-Mobile, who decided it would take matters into its own hands and 'solve' one of Pokemon Go's biggest problems itself.

Pokemon Go, while enjoyed universally, isn't without faults: the game is buggy, laggy, needs to stay on at all time and thus drains your battery, and really eats at your mobile data since all the best Pokemon tend to be away from free wifi hotspots.

While T-Moble can't fix most of those problems, it is offering a fix for that last one--specifically, if you download the free T-mobile Tuesday app between July 19th and August 9th, you'll get a full year of unlimited Data for Pokemon go. John Legere, president and CEO of Pokemon Go, had this extremely awkward thing to say:

"This is what T-Mobile Tuesday is all about - thanking customers with hot, new, totally free gifts every week, and right now, nothing is hotter than Pokemon Go! With the carriers' shared data schemes, players could easily burn up the family's data bucket - and then, hello, overages! At T-Mobile, we're unleashing Pokemon Go so our customers can play free for a year. It's gonna be a fantastic T-Mobile Tuesday!"

On top of this, T-Mobile will also pick 100 random users to get 100 dollars worth of Pokecoins (14,500 in total) while 5 more will get a free trip anywhere around the US. Presumably to hunt for Pokemon, but anyone who actually uses a free flight for Pokemon hunting needs a serious re-evaluation of their priorities.

So, while this is a naked attempt to piggyback on the popularity of the latest big app, I think the scary thing about this offer is that it's going to work: I imagine people WILL use this as an excuse to switch carriers for the sole purpose of getting a full year of data for Pokemon Go.

It's a little scary, to be honest. I wonder if this trajectory can hold...