“Playing the game is not appropriate in the museum, which is a memorial to the victims of Nazism”, museum communications director Andrew Hollinger told The Post.
Advertisement
Playing the game at the Holocaust museum and Auschwitz has brought a strong response on Twitter.
One woman told WPXI-TV in western Pennsylvania that her 15-year-old daughter was hit by a vehicle while playing the game and crossing a busy highway.
Some businesses are even advertising themselves specifically to “Pokemon Go” gamers.
Players of the game are so insane for finding the critters that they are trying every publicly accessible place.
One of the many, many articles providing Pokemon Go tips went as far as to recommend staying hydrated if you’re out playing for long periods during these long summer days. “We request that visitors to ANC refrain from such activity”.
Based on Google’s mapping technology, it allows players to wander around their neighbourhoods and wider afield to capture creatures that appear on their phones. With millions of players traveling from one real-world location to another in an attempt to “catch them all”, it is quite unsurprising that some controversies about the game have arisen.
But the problem is, can a location be removed from the game entirely?
Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told The Associated Press on Wednesday that its authorities were asking game producers to exclude the site of the former Nazi German death camp from games. However, some sites have posted instructions for obtaining the game in countries outside of the US, Australia or New Zealand, where it is available. The National Park Service – which oversees the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial – posted on its Facebook page to encourage selfie-taking with their favorite Pokemon creatures.
Niantic has run into trouble with Holocaust memorial sites before.
Both national landmarks have released statements telling players to be please be respectful to the solemnity of the sites and avoid playing the game while visiting.
Advertisement
The game’s developer, Niantic, ran into similar trouble past year when one of its games, Ingress, allowed players to battle for control over real-life locations that happened to include multiple former concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
