High demand for mobile augmented-reality game Pokemon Go crashed the app’s servers in Australia yesterday, while attracting safety and trespassing warnings from police.
The game has been a huge hit with players since it was rolled out in Australia, New Zealand and the US late last week, with more than 5 million downloads on the Android Google Play app store. It has also topped Apple’s app charts.
Within days of its introduction, US Android users were spending more time finding Pokemon Go’s “pocket monsters” than they were using a number of social media apps, including Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp and Instagram, according to data provider SimilarWeb.
A Pokemon Go “walk” in Sydney on Sunday saw thousands of gamers descend on the city’s iconic harbor, chasing virtual cartoon character monsters around the Opera House and Botanical Gardens with their mobile phones.
“[Western Australia] police have received numerous reports of Pokemon around the state. Rest assured — we’re gonna catch ’em all,” the police force said on Facebook, using the game’s tagline.
However, police said that “‘I was collecting Pokemon’ is not a legal defense against a charge of trespass, so be sure that you have permission to enter an area or building.”
Officers in the northern city of Darwin also took to the social network to advise users that, while their police station featured as a “Pokestop” — locations where players can pick up supplies — gamers did not have to enter it to get the items.
In Sydney and Melbourne, where Pokemon Go has been trending high on Twitter, users complained about crashed servers, with one posting: “Twitter = moral support group for when #pokemongo server goes down.”
“Finally the world has found something to unite about. Our collective trauma of the #PokemonGo server being down,” another user wrote.
Guy Blomberg, who arranged the Sydney “walk,” said he hoped to organize larger get-togethers at the Oz Comic-Con and PAX Australia video game conventions, which he helps run, later this year.
“Even on the train this morning, there were other people playing, so I leaned over and went: ‘What have you caught today?’” he said. “It’s a great conversation starter.”
The game added US$7 billion in market value to Nintendo Co.
The app’s popularity has sent shares in Nintendo — which invested in the game’s developer, Niantic Inc, after it was spun off from tech giant Google — soaring by more than 40 percent over three trading sessions in Japan.
“It is a truly incredible offering,” Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG Ltd, wrote in a note yesterday. “Still, as someone who missed the original Pokemon craze, I am finding the idea of millennials transfixed on their phones through the streets of Melbourne like a scene from The Walking Dead quite concerning.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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