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‘Pokemon Go:’ Niantic Gender-Swaps Two Popular Gen 3 Monsters In Embarrassing Gaffe

By Devina Belle
Published on: 01:12 PST, Oct 20, 2017

Reddit subscribers of The Silph Road found an error in Niantic’s coding for the third generation Pokemon coming soon to Pokemon Go. The gaming company decided to introduce a few Gen 3 Pokemon this Halloween, and loyal Pokemon trainers have been trying to find out all they can about the new monsters. During their investigation, some trainers found a pretty funny mistake in the coding of two legendary Pokemon.

According to Polygon, members of The Silph Road community caught a mistake in Niantic’s coding for Latios and Latias, two third-gen Pokemon that will most likely be released in Pokemon Go soon. The Silph Road member, Chrales, posted the coding for male-to-female spawn ratios for all the third-generation monsters expected to appear in the next update.

UberCattie, another member of the subreddit, soon realized that Niantic switched the genders for Latios and Latias. Anyone who read through Chrales’ post can clearly see that Latios are labeled as female, and Latias are labeled male.

Redditors from all over the world had a field day with Niantic’s rather embarrassing mistake. Some gender conformity jokes were passed around, and past coding mistakes were brought up. One member of the The Silph Road, Unhallowed67, brought up the time the gaming company accidentally released a Shiny Zapdos into the game.

“Latios and Latias refuse to conform to Pokemon’s gender roles,” commented OttoVonWong.

“Well if they manage it similar to the way they managed the Shiny Zapdos then they’ll make no mention of it ever and hope everyone just forgets,” Unhallowed added, reminding everyone about Niantic’s past error.

Other members of The Silph Road actually had some practical comments for AR game developer, like suggesting that the online grassroots community become the unofficial quality control team for the developer. This thread led to a few people volunteering for jobs at the company in jest, from positions like a reviewer for customer-facing codes to an unofficial Communications Manager for the east coast.

“This officially means The Silph Road has become the unofficial Niantic Quality Testing Team. I can help with code reviews for the customer-facing code. Can anyone else handle the customer-facing regression tests?” wrote razorsyntax on the same thread.

While most of the members of the subreddit were joking about becoming a quality control team for Pokemon Go, the notion isn’t too ridiculous. In fact, if anyone were to check Niantic’s career page, the company has a long list of open slots for people who are interested in becoming legitimately involved in the development and marketing of the game. Thus, some members of the Reddit community were actually qualified.

“I’d honestly love to be their unofficial (or official) Communications Manager for the east coast. A degree in Digital Communications, five years experience in logistics analysis, and almost 20 solid years of Poke-knowledge under my belt. I’m your guy. Edit – Look, I even know how to edit, too,” commented humpstyles.

Niantic seems to need a few fresh eyes to keep Pokemon Go running smoothly. The AR game is the first of its kind and is treading on unexplored waters. For now, Niantic has fixed the Latios – Latias gender mix-up, thanks to the sharp eyes of The Silph Road members.

[Featured Image by Niantic]

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