‘Pokemon Go’ Developer Wages War Against Hardcore Lubbock Players

Most everyone is familiar with the "Pokemon Go" app that was released in early July. Some people love it, while others seem to think it's just another way to waste time.

For those of us who fall into the first category, new updates and developer Niantic's war on external apps have become a divisive issue. And it's only getting worse.

Lubbock isn't the biggest city, but we have our fair share of Pokemon to catch -- especially by the Texas Tech Dairy Barn. Since Niantic's recent update, the tracking feature of the app has been rendered useless, meaning players are now having a much harder time finding any Pokemon at all.

While this wasn't a huge change from the tracker being stuck on a three-footprint glitch, players are getting more and more frustrated with Niantic's antics.

Niantic has added lots of features and taken some away, so we compiled the updates here.

For those just tuning in, the "Pokemon Go" app had a system that allowed players to find Pokemon nearby. This tracker used footprints to let the user see how far away the Pokemon was-- three for far, two for closer, or one for extremely close.

But from the shadows arose a new wave of apps that used a radar to help trainers find Pokemon on a much bigger scale, tapping into the system to display the creatures on a map. These heroes, like PokeBliss.com, gave players a way to find more Pokemon then they could have ever dreamed.

As shown above, PokeBliss has opened up the world of "Pokemon Go" to allow players to see real-time Pokemon locations.

But recently, Niantic has struck down most of these apps with cease and desist orders, claiming that players were cheating using a second party to locate Pokemon.

So now, players across the South Plains and beyond have been reduced to hoping betas and updates keep rolling in.

Niantic claims to be working as hard as they can to get the tracker back up to snuff, but only time will tell how they do it.