Pokemon Go players report major gender difference glitch
The Pokemon CompanyPokemon Go players have discovered a strange glitch that causes Pokemon to switch genders in the transition from the overworld to the catching screen.
When Pokemon Gold & Silver introduced gender to the Pokemon world, it opened the door for new kinds of evolutions, with Pokemon evolving based on whether they were male or female rather than through leveling up, trading, or using Evolution Stones.
The tricky thing about Pokemon who evolve by gender is that the male-to-female ratio can be heavily skewed in one direction. One example is Combee, where only females can evolve into Vespiquen, yet they barely appear compared to their male counterparts.
Luckily, male and female Pokemon can have visual differences, which means Pokemon Go players can tell them apart on the overworld. This is why it’s so surprising that tapping said Pokemon can lead to an unexpected result.
Pokemon are randomly switching gender in Pokemon Go
A user on the Pokemon Go Reddit has reported a glitch, as they encountered a female Combee on the overworld (as seen by the pink diamond on its head), but when the encounter started, it switched to the much less valuable male Combee. Other users quickly confirmed that they had also encountered the bug.
“I’ve had this happen a few times! When I finally did catch a female, it was spawned as just the male on the map lol,” one user mentioned, and another said, “Lol I had the thought of ‘“’that’s fake’ then opened the app and had the exact same thing happen. Ohhh Niantic, you suck.”
One user pointed out that is bug isn’t restricted to Combee: “This is a common error and it happens with other Pokemon all the time. Is not even a bug, is just a mistake with the 3d models on the map. It happens with Heracross and from time to time with Pikachu.”
“You can’t expect something better from the company that forgot to activate the shiny option during events, even during community days and when Zapdos was released, they used the shiny 3d model instead of the regular one.”
Pokemon Go is notorious for glitches like this, especially for people with poor Internet access on their phones, as the game can struggle to load assets properly. This means that the Pokemon you encounter might look a lot different when you finally get the chance to catch them.
