Featured Image Credit: US Department of Justice
Topics: Jeffrey Epstein, Politics, US News, News, Technology, Social Media, Crime
Rhiannon Ingle
Topics: Jeffrey Epstein, Politics, US News, News, Technology, Social Media, Crime
Jeffrey Epstein's island has now officially been removed from Pokémon Go, but the news has raised several questions online.
Pokémon Go, an augmented reality mobile game, was initially developed and released by Niantic, in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, for iOS and Android devices, and it uses the GPS on mobile devices to find, catch, train, and fight Pokémon, and it imitates the player's actual location.
The team behind Pokémon Go has now pulled a real-world in-game location from the convicted sex offender's notorious private island.
Players had spotted a PokéStop on Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands. The stop, named 'Sun Dial', matched a real landmark on the island.
Advert
Developer Niantic removed it earlier this week, confirming to GAMINGbible that the Sun Dial Poké Stop had been taken out of the game.
The location is believed to have been submitted between 2020 and 2021, with data pulled from multiple independent spoofing reports placing the PokéStop at Google Maps coordinates linked to Epstein’s island, according to the same sources.
After catching light of the news, gamers rushed to social media to share their thoughts, with many raising questions over why on earth the PokéStop was there to begin with.
"Why was there a PokéStop there in the first place?" hit out one X user while a second declared: "You have to physically go to a location to submit it for a PokéStop... so who tf added it
A third echoed: "Why was it there?"
"How was there even one to begin with?" added another.
And a final X user theorised: "Does this mean Pokémon Go can do their own Epstein files of all the accounts that interacted with the PokéStop?
The most likely explanation is that a player submitted Epstein Island as an official PokéStop through Niantic Wayfarer, the platform used to suggest in-game locations, reportedly as a joke, per GAMINGbible.
Wayfarer rules state that submissions must have safe pedestrian access, but the island clearly breaks that requirement, given that it can only be reached by boat or plane.
The word 'Pokémon' actually appears in the publicly available Epstein files documents via the US Department of Justice.
An email dated 13 July, 2016, just one week after the game’s global launch, claims Epstein wrote to Sh. Fahad Bin Hamad, the second son and second-oldest child of the former Emir of Qatar: "Check out pokemon go if you have not already the first of augmented games."
Tyla has reached out to the Pokémon Go press team for comment.