Pokémon GO players recently faced issues when trying to log in via Facebook, locking out hundreds of people from the game. Pokémon GO just launched its new Season of Discovery last Tuesday, June 1, 2021, introducing a whole new array of content and events across the next three months. These include the debut of several new Pokémon, the return of a number of seasonal species, a new lineup of Pokémon that can hatch from eggs, and more.
The first month of the Season of Discovery is chock full of events for Pokémon GO players to experience, with certain days featuring specific Pokémon and items which players will encounter and earn more often. A new legendary Pokémon is also expected to be released later in the month, although it hasn’t been announced which one it will be. To start off the first two weeks of the Season of Discovery, players have the opportunity to catch Regirock, Regice, and Registeel as they appear in raids until June 17.
Dexerto reported the outage earlier, citing several users who Tweeted about not being able to log into the game through Facebook. Other users who also have their accounts connected via Facebook also mentioned that they were logged out of their accounts and couldn’t log in again. According to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages and similar issues of several online games and services like Pokémon GO, a few hundred players reported having login issues with the game around the same time.
Fortunately, the issue was resolved by Pokémon GO developer Niantic several hours later, with the studio replying to several players on Twitter to both apologize and confirm that the issue has been successfully resolved. The company also recommended that players restart the app before trying to log in again, along with other typical suggestions such as ensuring that the player’s login credentials are accurate and that they have access to a stable internet connection. While Niantic didn’t detail why and how the Facebook login issue occurred, it could be due to a communication problem between the game’s and Facebook’s servers.
While issues like this don’t occur too often, they aren’t unheard of, and studios are usually prepared to deal with them in a timely manner, which is what occurred in this case. At least in Niantic's case, it seems that the outage was a simple technical error, and not a malicious act like the DDoS attack which hit World of Warcraft during the launch of the Burning Crusade expansion. With the Season of Discovery only a few days in and the weekend beginning, it’s good that Niantic was able to resolve the Facebook login issue quickly and allow players to get back into the game and continue preparing for next month’s Pokémon GO Fest 2021.
Source: Dexerto, Niantic Help/Twitter, Heather/Twitter