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Boyfriend gets caught cheating through Pokémon Go

‘She saw that I had caught a Pokémon while at my ex’s house’

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
Wednesday 13 July 2016 08:46 BST
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Nintendo shares surged 12.8 per cent to 22,860 yen in Tokyo, on the news that the Pokémon Go app was expected to be released in Japan within the week
Nintendo shares surged 12.8 per cent to 22,860 yen in Tokyo, on the news that the Pokémon Go app was expected to be released in Japan within the week (Reuters)

People’s addiction to Pokémon Go knows no bounds, from the man playing during his wife’s labour to the people unable to stop catching the little creatures even when in a Holocaust museum. But one man’s addiction to the game has resulted in the end of his relationship – because he was caught cheating.

For the uninitiated, Pokémon Go is an augmented reality smartphone game that allows users to catch the characters in the real-world. Due to the game’s GPS tracking it is possible to see the characters in your immediate real-world surroundings and record the places where they are caught.

Evan Scribner, from Queens in New York, didn’t take the game’s advanced GPS tagging capabilities into account when he decided to open Pokémon Go and start playing it while at his ex-girlfriend’s house in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

This video of Pokémon Go players in Central Park is a glimpse of our dystopian future

“She saw that I had caught a Pokémon while at my ex’s house,” he told the New York Post.

When Mr Scribner’s girlfriend asked why he had been in his ex’s neighbourhood, he was unable to come up with a good excuse, he told the newspaper.

“She found out last night at my house and hasn’t contacted me since then,” he added.

The game has been available in the US, Australia and New Zealand for less than two weeks but has already been downloaded to Android phones more times than dating app Tinder, and more than 60 per cent of these users in the US are playing daily, according to app analytics company Similar Web.

Shares in Nintendo, which part owns the game, soared by 25 per cent on Monday and another 13 per cent on Tuesday, adding around £6 billion to its market value.

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