While most countries are trying to work out how to handle the influx of Pokemon GO players, Iran has gone completely the other way.
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The BBC has reported that Iran is now officially the first country to blanket ban the augmented reality game, citing security concerns. Iranian authorities reached out to Niantic apparently last month to see whether the developers would work with the country.
It’s not known precisely what Iran would have wanted — whether it be a blanket removal of Pokemon, gyms and Pokestops from areas with national security interest, or whether they wanted certain features removed wholesale. Nevertheless, the game is now Poke-gone as far as Iranian officials are concerned.
Pokemon GO has been banned before, of course, but not by an entire country. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Arlington National Cemetery have advised players to not catch Pokemon while touring the grounds and facilities. City of Canada Bay Council in Sydney successfully had multiple Pokestops removed following multiple complaints and mass gatherings outside residential areas.
Authorities in the Northern Territory reminded players via Facebook that it wasn’t necessary to enter the Darwin police station to catch Pokemon, and NSW Courts also published an advisory reminding gamers that the use of recording devices was not permitted, regardless of how many Pikachu are about.
Comments
7 responses to “Iran Says No To Pokemon GO”
‘Poke no-GO’ was just there hoping to be used.
It’s not the only country that has played in to the Pokemon Go “Security Concern”
Even the West fell just short of security bans and instead has gone for the wide reaching campaign against Pokemon.
Bloody hell, almost makes you believe that there seriously is something wrong with Pokemon.
(You know, if this type of thing wasn’t driven purely by money)
Lots of places ban taking photos of government or military buildings.
If you make the department of defense office a pokestop, you can imagine that would annoy a few officials.
I think businesses shouldn’t be pokestops. Keep it to art, statues, fountains, parks etc…
They probably didn’t properly predict the effect this game would have, but they sure as hell should change things now that they have seen it.
The game should send more people out for bush walks, the beach etc… not the middle of a street or heavily residential areas.
99.9% or more of the pokestops are player submitted though, makes it a little hard to police. There’s several million world wide, who is going to sift through all that?
Well back when ingress started they were more or less individually vetted. And that’s where most Pokestops came from.
My point is, they should spread stuff out a bit. Not have 7 pokestops of 7 statues in the same park with 50m of each other.
You don’t have to sift through anything. It would be pretty straight forward to implement proximity limits.
And if you already saturate an inner city area or park, then the pokestops would naturally expand outwards into suburbs, national parks, beaches etc.
It would be pretty straight forward to automatically recognize certain features from maps. They already do that for parks and lakes. Why not for schools, piers, national parks, walking tracks, bike tracks etc… ?
Pretty sure they already introduced proximity limits. The number of pokestops are way lower than the number of portals around all the areas I play at.
But it’s still coming to North Korea, right?
Riiight?!
There were Ingress portals there so…..