Pokémon Go plans unprecedented downtime
2016 throwback.
Pokémon Go will take its servers offline and be unplayable for seven hours on Monday, 1st June. It'll be like 2016 all over again!
It's an unprecedented outage for the game, which hasn't deliberately gone wholesale offline since its early rework of the game's gyms.
Here in the UK, the timing works out as between 7pm and 2am on Tuesday. In the US, it'll mean the game is down most of the day (11am until 6pm Pacifc).
Developer Niantic has not publicly stated what it is up to other than "server maintenance", but it sounds like the game's database is being transferred to new servers - something which cannot be done while the game is online.
Elsewhere in Pokémon Go, today brings the game's final week of throwback challenges, this time themed around Sinnoh. You'll need to complete these to gain free access to the forthcoming Champion Special Research, which unlocks new Galarian Pokémon from the latest mainline games Pokémon Sword and Shield.
Meanwhile, the game's proposed Pokécoins rework continues its testing phase in Australia. One week on, fans on reddit report negative effects to the game's community. It remains to be seen how Niantic will react before rolling any change out globally.