Pokemon Go update was released to hide bad reviews, players claim, as fury leads to outpour of anger on App Store

The conspiracy theory reflects the anger and frustration of players who have spent hours playing the game only to find their investment undermined

People play the Pokemon Go game at a park at Tin Shui Wai on July 26, 2016 in Hong Kong (Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images)

Pokemon Go players are resorting to conspiracy theories to explain their anger with the game.

The hugely popular app released an update this week that looked to fix some of the biggest problems with the game. But along with a host of new updates, it also removed some of its central features: stopping people from actually tracking down Pokemon, by getting rid of both the in-app trackers and the websites that sprung up to replace it when it broke.

Just hours after that hugely controversial update was issued, another found its way to the App Store. It offered minor changes, according to the update notes, and that was exactly why it irritated trainers so much.

In a post that has now been shared thousands of times, one Reddit user said that the update appeared to be an attempt to “wipe out the negative reviews that just poured in”. The game’s App Store page was filled with angry comments about the recent update – but those have all just been removed with the new update, since they show for each version rather than for the game as a whole.

But it hasn’t actually worked – the continuing anger means that the game is still sitting between one and two stars on the App Store.

“Seriously unbelievable,” the trainer wrote. “Mere hours after the step removal update. Here's what is listed:

“1.1.1 -Performance improvement in Pokemon details and list screens -Correct link for app upgrade

“Of course, this coincidentally ALSO has the effect of wiping out all the one-star reviews that poured in last night.”

It isn’t clear that Niantic actually released the update to get rid of the old reviews, since it had promised when the game was released that it would receive updates every two weeks. But it shows how the minor upgrades and the continuing silence on the fate of the important “step tracker” have annoyed many users so much that they are saying they will stop playing the game.

“F*** this developer,” wrote the author of the Reddit post. “I’m done.”