Pokemon GO July Battle Weekend gives players the opportunity to seek out and defeat multiple Team GO Rocket leaders and the team's head honcho Giovanni. Doing so gives Pokemon GO players a chance to capture rare Shadow Pokemon, including Shadow Latios.
Niantic released the Pokemon GO Battle Weekend event to celebrate the game's sixth anniversary. During this event, players were able to engage in several different activities, but the main draw for many was hunting down Team GO Rocket battles in order to find rare Shadow Pokemon to strengthen their teams.
Normally, in order to find and fight Giovanni players first need to complete special research Team GO Rocket tasks. These include things like defeating Team GO Rocket grunts and leaders. Once those tasks have been completed, players are rewarded with a Super Rocket Radar that reveals potential locations for Giovanni. Once the Super Rocket Radar is used, PokeStops will have decoy locations or the actual location of Giovanni, but players have to check out each PokeStop to see if it's a decoy or not. A bug discovered by Reddit user Htb323 let them fight Giovanni while leaving the "Find the Team GO Rocket Boss" task uncompleted.
While it may seem useful to bypass the lengthy process of sifting through decoy grunt after decoy grunt in an effort to find and defeat Giovanni, it's actually kind of a problem. Leaving that task uncompleted means that players can't finish their research task and reap the rewards, and the only way to find the boss is to use a Super Rocket Radar. So if a player used their last Super Rocket Radar and ended up encountering this bug, their only recourse would be to contact Niantic support or hope that they can find another Super Rocket Radar through some other event.
Although this is only one of several bugs in Pokemon GO, given how much it can set back players trying to get their research tasks completed makes it kind of a big deal. Apparently, this isn't a new bug either, as Reddit users ApioMan and WiselyAltruistic posted about the same bug both one and two years ago, respectively. Luckily, Niantic support seems to be on the ball with their response, fixing the research task manually and saving players the trouble of burning through more Super Rocket Radars to find Giovanni legitimately.
Some players might enjoy exploiting this bug to get the drop on Giovanni without spending their time sniffing out decoys. Most, however, are probably going to be looking to complete their research tasks and get the full slate of rewards without having to deal with it. Hopefully, this bug is ironed out by the next time Giovanni shows his face in the world of Pokemon GO, but if it isn't, players can always get in touch with Niantic support to get things straightened out.
Pokemon GO is available now on mobile devices.
