Niantic Corp, the Google offshoot company that co-created the gaming phenomenon Pokemon Go, late last week said that they want to bring the game to more than 200 countries, but they did not give a timetable as to when all this would happen. Given the server issues that they have been experiencing due to the sheer number of users trying to catch virtual monsters, we expected that the rollout will be happening pretty slowly and over a longer period of time. However, this weekend, they decided to add 26 more countries (plus 1 more just today!).
The 26 lucky new countries where trainers can now go and hunt for their own Pokemons are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland. The countries are all in Europe, much to the disappointment of Asian fans who were hoping that at least some of the new additions would be in their region. Then just today, they added Canada as well to the list of countries where you can play the game and catch the monsters in your hood.
Just as the rollouts were announced, a group of troublemakers calling themselves Poodle Corp made a widespread DDoS attack. This led to users having difficulties logging in and getting stuck at the loading screen. Although Pokemon Go was able to go back online within minutes, the “hackers” promised that it was just a test and that they were planning to do something “on a larger scale soon.” This is of course expected for something as huge as this game, and so all the more Niantic and Nintendo need to up their security.
There is no additional news as to when other countries, particularly those outside Europe and North America, will be able to legally download Pokemon Go. You probably will not miss it, but still, stay tuned for more developments over the next few days.
VIA: SlashGear
