A Rare Pokemon Go Glitch Is Trapping Pokemon In Gyms

A new Pokemon Go glitch has surfaced that's resulting in Trainer's Pokemon being stuck in limbo while being labeled as a gym defender despite the gym being empty.

The rare issue seems to appear whenever Trainers attempt to assign a Pokemon to a gym in order to defend it. An error will pop up on the player's screen, and a notification will say that the attempt to assign the Pokemon to the gym has failed. However, if you navigate to that Pokemon's page to check it's status, it'll say that the Pokemon is indeed defending a gym, meaning that you can't do anything with it.

Even more curious, the gym badge page will also show that your Pokemon isn't in the gym either if you look at the details for that gym's badge. The gym acts like it doesn't have your Pokemon, but your profile says that your Pokemon is in the gym, resulting in a stalemate that players are unsure how to resolve.

Several solutions have been attempted, such as placing another one of your Pokemon in the gym and having it defeated to return to you, but that doesn't release the hidden Pokemon from the gym. Other players can interact with the gym like normal.

The situation has prompted more than one post on r/TheSilphRoad, the latest of which listed the symptoms of the glitch in detail as well as the steps that the user had attempted to fix their issue themselves. A list was also compiled within the post of links to other users who are facing the same issue, some of which having their Pokemon stuck in a gym for up to a week.

This most recent post also received a response from Niantic on the issue. A Niantic employee confirmed that they recognize the bug as a persistent issue after receiving several reports on the issue and are looking into resolving the glitch.