Pokémon Go fans are hungry for some more minor text fixes

Pokémon Go launched as a dysfunctional game that didn’t quite deliver on its promise — at least for the first few weeks. The servers kept crashing. Players couldn’t log in for hours. Hunting and catching Pokémon was far more trying than intended. All the Pokémon fans wanted after the game’s release was an update that would correct these problems and make it playable.

Instead, many of the earliest patches offered only one tiny update: minor text fixes. Spelling and grammar errors, it seemed, took precedence with Niantic over the playability of Pokémon Go.

Not surprisingly, players were displeased.

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The Pokémon Go fandom has only grown since the game’s launch, however, and in so doing it’s become more accommodating. Although the constant updates for unseen minor text fixes proved frustrating, a subset of the game’s Reddit base has grown rather fond of this type of update.

That’s because "minor text fixes" is now a meme within the Pokémon Go community, whose members express disappointment when Niantic ushers in an update without cleaning up any text. Many have reclaimed the patch note as a symbol of their suffering as they wait for more important improvements.

"Thank god!" wrote one sarcastic user after version 1.0.3 came out in July. "This is the minor text fix I've been waiting for! Game is now playable again."

Whenever a user edits their comment, they’ll note that they’ve made minor text fixes; the subreddit itself replaces "edited" for the phrase. In threads detailing the new update, mods will include whether or not the version includes the vaunted text fixes.

It’s come to the point where players are making requests for in-game text alterations on the forum. One of the top threads on the subreddit today — sitting at 5,200 upvotes and growing — is called "Minor text fix needed: ‘A’ is used instead of ‘An’ in front of Pokémon names that start with vowels."

This is a legitimately useful suggestion; currently, the game tells players they’ve received "a" Abra candy, not "an" Abra candy like it should. Yet the thread title doesn’t quite grasp the grammatical nuance of vowel sounds, as another poster pointed out.

"'Minor text fix needed' text fix needed," wrote another user, correcting the topic creator. "‘A’ is used instead of ‘An’ in front of Pokémon names that sound like vowels."

We’ve reached out to Niantic to see if this minor text fix is in the works.