What's The Problem With The New 'Pokémon GO' Avatars?

Stop us if you've heard this before: Pokémon fans are upset at the graphics of a Pokémon game due to them being buggy, unattractive, and frankly unnecessary.

This time, the culprit is Pokémon GO, which just put out an update for player avatars that nobody seems to like. Here's what's going on with yet another Pokémon controversy.

What Happened With The Pokémon GO Avatars?

On April 17th, Pokémon GO developers Niantic pushed out an update tweaking the game's player avatar system, which had been in place since the game swept the world in 2016. In theory, this was intended to give players more customization ability for their avatars to make the avatars look more like the actual players.

Unfortunately, in the eyes of players, it seems that Niantic's idea of making avatars look "more like the player" involved giving avatars more weight, less expressive faces, and inconsistent textures. Put simply, the vast majority of the fanbase thinks they look worse.

How Have Fans Discussed The Pokémon GO Avatar Changes?

Pokémon GO fans have flooded social media with complaints and examples of the "downgrades" suffered by their avatars. In the wake of the update, nearly the entire Pokémon GO subreddit was devoted to negative posts regarding the change. In addition to general "downgrade" complaints, users noticed several bizarre issues regarding the new avatars' crotches, including a bug where the camera gave viewers an uncensored upskirt shot of the avatars. Thankfully, that bug has been patched out but there are still clear issues with the new avatars' crotch areas.

As is customary when a video game makes an unpopular change, memes followed Niantic's avatar update, and the controversy's crop was particularly ruthless towards the Pokémon GO developers.

Will Niantic Change The Pokémon GO Avatars Back?

As of now, Niantic has not said there are plans to revert the Pokémon GO avatars, but there is at least some reason for hope that they can make them less… like that in the future. In response to the criticism, Niantic community manager Kestral Riot opened up a dialogue on Twitter for (constructive) criticism about the new avatars, which he at least seems to be taking into account. Obviously, such an informal feedback forum is no guarantee that the game will do anything to address the criticisms, but it does offer some hope that Niantic is at least aware that fans dislike the change.

Still, a concerning interview has cast doubt on Niantic's development process. An interview posted to Reddit on /r/TheSilphRoad with a purported anonymous tester found the tester saying many of the issues fans had with the update were brought up by the test team. However, these issues were said to be ignored by Niantic, who pushed the update out within months and without key issues fixed.

For the full history of The Pokémon Go avatar change controversy, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.