'Pokemon Go' Might Let Players Add Facebook Friends Soon

Pokemon Go seems to be making plans to allow players to add their Facebook friends to their [...]

By Christian Hoffer

Pokemon Go seems to be making plans to allow players to add their Facebook friends to their in-game friend list in the near future.

Pokemon Go recently updated its Privacy Policy, seemingly in anticipation of its new "Adventure Sync" feature. Adventure Sync will link up to a player's Apple Health or Google Fit app on their phone and reward them with candies, berries, and other rewards for reaching certain walking milestones, even when the game isn't running on their phone.

However, those who actually read through the revised Privacy Policy (and let's be honest, there probably wasn't that many) also noted that Niantic plans to add a way to add Facebook friends to their in-game friend list.

"If you elect to enable the Facebook User Friends permission available in some of our games, we will import from your linked Facebook account the list of your friends who also play the game and enabled Facebook User Friends," the revised Privacy Policy reads. "If you enable that permission, your Facebook profile picture and the name on your Facebook account will be visible to your friends in-game."

The policy also notes that players can still unfriend their Facebook friends in-game, in case you're only Facebook friends close with someone and not Pokemon Go friends close with them.

This is a pretty common setting in mobile games, but it's the first time we've seen any hint of integration between Facebook and Pokemon Go. Of course, it also opens up the always controversial conversation about what Facebook could do with any data it receives fom Pokemon Go, but that's no different to how most other free to play games or apps work.

We'll note that the Privacy Policy is the same for all of Niantic's games, so Pokemon Go might not be getting Facebook integration anytime soon. Still, this is an interesting possibility and could help players who don't have many in-game friends or are convinced that they're the only one of their friends who still play the game.

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