Both titles, as well as Ingress, are designed to get people out and about, exploring their local area and teaming up in groups. That’s the opposite to what people should be doing in the face of a pandemic, with people urged to isolate and reduce close contact with others wherever possible. Community days even more so, given that they reward groups of players that roam around city centers in large packs.

The safety of our global player community is our top priority. COVID-19 is challenging us and the world to adjust. We’re putting our focus on expanding features and experiences in our games that can be enjoyed in an individual setting and that also encourage exploration!

— Niantic, Inc. (@NianticLabs) March 13, 2020

As well as axing the Abra community day, Pokémon Go has been changed to enable to buy 30 Incense for just 1 PokéCoin. This Incense, which acts as a lure to draw Pokémon to your location, will now last for an hour, rather than the 30 minutes as usual. In addition, hatch distances have been dropped by half if you incubate an egg in the next couple of weeks.

And if you live close to a PokéStop, you’ll be able to get gifts more regularly, reducing the need to travel far and wide. Niantic is also tweaking the game so many more Pokémon spawn in the wild, so if you live in a city, you might not need to leave your block but still get plenty of ‘mons caught. These new rules are in place “until further notice,” and we expect them to remain in place for as long as authorities say there’s a risk.

Kotaku looked at 25,000 location records shared with it by 10 players of Niantic games. It found that Niantic kept about three location records per minute of Wizards Unite gameplay. That was nearly twice as many records as it kept for Pokémon Go. In one case, Niantic had at least one location record taken nearly every hour of the day. In other words, it likely swept up location data even when the user was not playing.

When Kotaku brought this up to Niantic, the company blamed the non-stop data collection on a bug in the Android version. It says the bug has been fixed. All other data collection is detailed in its privacy policy, and users can request to have their data deleted.

In its report, Kotaku warns that Niantic has enough location data to “discern individual patterns of user behavior as well as intimate details about a player’s life.” That may be true, but it’s nothing new or specific to Niantic. Google has enough location data to help investigators solve crimes — though it now lets you auto-delete your history. And bugs that leak your location data are not unheard of, just ask Twitter.