Pokemon Go Players Flock To Pokestop On Epstein Island

"Little Saint James, informally known as Epstein Island, saw a sudden influx of virtual visitors over the weekend after players spotted that the location was home to a Pokéstop. The Pokéstop in question has since been removed from the game by developers Niantic, but not in time to stop an unquantifiable number of players from flocking to the island once owned by deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein."

"The inciting post that caused the flood of to Little Saint James seems to be , dated February 4, on r/PokemonGoSpoofing, titled "Can someone see if there's anything on Epstein's Island?" In this context, "spoofing" refers to a method that allows players to alter their in-game GPS data so that they can visit any location they desire. Prior to its removal, I was able to verify the existence of the "Sun Dial" Pokéstop on Little Saint James by using a spoofing method."

"From there, several viral posts began to surface on social media, including this February 7 post on X. There's no exact way to quantify how many players visited the island, but there are numerous posts on r/pokemongo detailing methods to reach the location. On February 9, developer Niantic confirmed to GAMINGbible that the Sun Dial Pokéstop had been removed from the game."

"In a now-deleted thread , the user discerned that the Sun Dial Pokéstop was submitted as a point of interest through at some point between 2020 and 2021. is Niantic's other augmented reality mobile title, and served as a precursor to . As a result, a lot of the data in has been scraped from . The same user also figured out that the image used for the Sun Dial Pokéstop was taken from a YouTube video dated July 2019,"

A Sun Dial Pokéstop appeared on Little Saint James, prompting many players to virtually visit the island via GPS spoofing. Viral posts on social platforms and subreddit threads spread methods to reach the location, though the exact number of virtual visitors remains unquantified. Niantic removed the Sun Dial Pokéstop on February 9. A user traced the Pokéstop submission to a point-of-interest submission through Niantic's other augmented reality mobile title between 2020 and 2021, noting that much of that game's data was scraped into the current game. The Pokéstop image originated from a July 2019 YouTube drone video of the island.

Read at Kotaku