Niantic Pokemon Go is available for iOS and Android devices.
Thousands of players across Pokemon Go are currently getting a strange new error message.
The error message popping up on Monday afternoon says, “failed to get game data from the server,” with this coming up in front of the login screen and giving players only a “retry” button.
A lot of fans saw this message and immediately became nervous that they had somehow gotten themselves banned. However, there’s no need to worry: this is a widespread issue, and if you’re getting this message right now, it has nothing to do with you.
This is likely just due to an issue with Niantic’s servers, although it’s not affecting all players. Some people who have received the message have been able to log back in by either restarting their phone or force quitting the game. You can force quit on an iOS device by tapping the home button twice and swiping up on Pokemon Go. You can force quit on an Android device by going to settings, choosing apps, hit the running tab, hitting Pokemon Go, and select force stop.
A lot of players have also received this error message only for the game to naturally start working on its own again after a few minutes. So if you’ve tried restarting and force quitting and you’re still not able to log in, just wait five or ten minutes, and there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to play again without having done anything.
This is the first time in quite a while that there has been a widespread server issue with Pokemon Go, something that was quite common when the game first launched in July 2016. Back then, the servers were incredibly unstable and would go down for hours at a time. These days, a server outrage is more of a rare occurrence.