Pokemon Go has stopped the rollout of its latest update due to some severe performance issues.
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Yesterday, Niantic’s Support Twitter account confirmed that they had pulled the latest update due to issues discovered after the update went live to a small group of players.
Trainers, we’ve halted the rollout of Pokémon GO version 0.81.1 due to performance issues we’ve observed over the past few days. (1/2)
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) November 7, 2017
While we investigate the issues in 0.81.1, we’ll be rolling out Pokémon GO version 0.79.4 with some minor fixes. (2/2) https://t.co/0VeDm3JB6F
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) November 7, 2017
The new update contained anti-cheat code, the ability to power up a Pokemon to level 39.5, and several memory management upgrades that was supposed to improve performance.
Players who had the new update claimed that there was severe issues with lags and crashes in the new update, which made the game nearly unplayable.
What Caused the Crashes
The performance issues are believed to be tied to the update’s use of a new version of Unity, the game engine around which Pokemon Go is built. While the new version of Unity was supposed to fix bugs, it seems that Pokemon Go‘s code didn’t quite line up with the changes made in Unity.
While Pokemon Go does do in-house beta testing on all of its updates, the developers also do soft launches to monitor the update before it goes to a wider release. A small portion of players receive the updates and they’re monitored to see if there’s a major uptick in crashes and performance issues.
Of course, pulling back an update doesn’t help Pokemon Go‘s reputation as a glitch-filled game run by an inept company, but we’d rather see the update get pulled back rather than Niantic refuse to acknowledge the problem at all.
