Pokémon Go players are altering public map data to catch rare Pokémon
Enlarge / Rather than going to beaches to catch Wigletts, some Pokemon Go players are trying to bring the beaches to themselves. (credit: Niantic)
Ah,Pokemon Go. The hottest mobile game of 2016 remains a potent force to this day, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a year from tens of millions of monthly active players.
Part of what keeps the game fresh is a continuous trickle of new Pokemon. The game began with just the original 151 monsters back in 2016 and has gradually caught up to the current generation of Switch games in bits and pieces over the last eight years. The game is currently in the process of adding monsters fromScarletandViolet, and that's where this story begins.
Two of the latest additions to the Pokemon Go roster are Wiglett and Wugtrio, riffs on the designs of Diglett and Dugtrio, who live on beaches and look kind of like garden eels. Pokemon Go uses a biome system that restricts certain Pokemon to certain types of real-world terrain, like forests, mountains, and beaches. As aquatic Pokemon, Wiglett and Wugtrio show up in the beach biome.