Pokmon GO a Runaway Success, Raises Safety and Crime Concerns

The launch of Pokmon GO late last week has become a huge success over the weekend stunning onlookers. Important numbers include roughly 7.5 million downloads of the app by iOS and Android users, $14.8 million generated from in-game sales, and the skyrocketing of Nintendo stock value by 25%. The augmented reality game puts players role-playing as Pokmon trainers in the real world using their smartphones to collect Pokmon placed around the environment and doing battle in select locations. The appeal of the mobile game comes from its simplicity and the tremendous appeal of the Pokmon franchise which peaked shortly after the international launch of Pokmon Red and Blue for the Gameboy in 1998 and the subsequent anime television series and trading-card game.

The developer of Pokmon GO is Niantic Inc., formerly a part of Google and which previously released a similar game called Ingress. Both Ingress and to some extent Pokmon GO are backed by local advertising where businesses can sponsor their real world location for game supply areas or combat zones. The success of Pokmon GO has seen numerous players dedicated to playing the game and swarming these real world locations prompting safety concerns for players venturing into unsafe areas. This past Sunday, four teenage suspects in the greater St. Louis region were arrested for luring Pokmon GO players to a gas station and then robbing them at gunpoint.

Other concerns for player safety revolve around the attachment of the players to their mobile devices while moving around the real world. This can put players in harms way such as vehicular traffic while they are distracted. Concerning privacy, users who sign-in the app using their Google Account grant Niantic permission to access emails and Google Drive files, permissions normally reserved only for Google apps, prompting concerns over privacy exploits.