Pokemon Go players demand action to combat “infuriating” gift trolls
Niantic Pokemon Go trainers have called for changes to be made to the game’s gifting mechanics after trolls prevent other players’ XP gains.
Pokemon Go has a variety of different ways that trainers can get XP to level up, a handful of which involve giving gifts to others on one’s Friends List.
Giving gifts to other players is easy and benefits both parties, with each receiving either helpful items or bonus experience points.
Unfortunately, some Pokemon Go trainers have been trolling gift-givers by unfriending them so they don’t receive the bonus XP for the exchange.
Pokemon Go players infuriated by gift trolls
A post on the Pokemon Go subreddit titled “Mildly Infuriating: When they open the last gift and drop you as a friend before you can also claim the XP” gained traction among the community after it highlighted this issue.
An image attached to the post showed the exchange, with the game showing that both parties had finally made it to “Ultra Friends,” meaning they would have at least received 50,000 XP.
Unfortunately, the gift recipient decided to unfriend the original poster as soon as they accepted the gift resulting in no XP for one party.
Trainers among the community expressed their frustration with the system, with many wondering why the exploit was in the game at all.
“I don’t know why they even coded it this way in the first place,” said AyaApocalypse while another user said that is the “scummiest thing you can do in Pokemon Go.”
Other trainers recounted similar experiences but chalked the incident up to a glitch. “This happened to me recently and I had no idea I didn’t get the xp I just thought it was a glitch. Wow, I’m so irritated now.”
While it’s unclear why exactly Niantic programmed the gift system this way, many players agree that it should be changed to prevent this from happening in the future.