Drivers Playing Pokemon Go Might Have Caused Damages Worth Rs. 47,000 Crores in the U.S

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The world has seen the craze for the Niantic’s Pokemon Go AR game. It was released in July last year for the Android and iOS devices. The company chose the freemium model with in-app purchases. It game has reaped almost $200 million in its first month and crossed $1 billion worth of revenues in February this year. The company has achieved this without officially launching in most of the countries. While everything seems good, there are also several reports about its side effects.

Now, a new report called “Death by Pokemon Go” has revealed some astonishing figures caused by the traffic accidents. The report includes all the accident occuried in Tippecanoe County, Indiana in the first 148 days after the game launch. All the accidents in this particluar county had caused damages worth $5.2 million to $25.5 million. The number of accidents occurred in these 148 days are 286 more than the accidents occurred during the same period in 2015.

Out of these 286 accidents, 134 have occurred near the Pokestops. At the Pokestops, the players can get new pokeballs for unlocking new creatures. If the damages caused in the Tippecanoe County are scaled to the whole of the U.S, the Pokemon Go might have caused damages as high as $7.3 billion. Based on today’s conversion, the value will be little more than Rs. 47,000 Crores. Apart from the damages in the Tippecanoe County, there are two traffic-related deaths.

While Pokemon Go was designed to be played by walking, the craze of the game has made the players move faster between each pokestop. Instead of just walking, the players had preferred driving between these pokestops, which indirectly resulted in the above mentioned damages. While Niantic later disabled moving faster between the pokestops, it wasn’t implemented all over the world. Earlier this month, Niantic also announced a new AR game called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite in partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive.

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