Niantic, Inc. President Setsuto Murai announced on Saturday that Pokémon GO accounts from countries where the official release of the game has not taken place will be disengaged from servers permanently.
Citing server load as the reason for the drastic decision, the announcement is bound to make a lot of fans of the game unhappy, due to a widely circulated, freely available APK that has hundreds of thousands of (illegal) downloads. "The official global release will probably happen sometime next month, and will allow for the creation of new accounts via Google or Facebook. However, current game data linked to social media platforms will be permanently deleted.", Mr. Murai said in a private press conference on Saturday.
The decision has caused widespread uproar on Twitter, with fans criticising the brashness with which millions of cumulative gameplay hours has been wiped clean.