UPDATE November 11, 2019: Trainers, players report of losing their accounts again and Niantic can’t do anything about it.
A Pokemon Go player who was playing the game since the launch back in 2016, reported of losing his account and everything that he bought in-game. He contacted Niantic but without a positive answer.
Will Niantic do something about these lost accounts? There are so many reports of this kind, but they can’t solve the issue.
Here is the story of MinrThrt who lost his account on October 22. This was first shared on TSR.
Buyer beware. My account simply vanished in October, after I had played it since 2016.
Niantic’s response after numerous emails: “we assume someone stole it from you and we can’t do anything about it”. No evidence that that happened, simply that is their conclusion since “what else could it be?”
Just be aware that no matter how much time, effort and money you invest in this game we love, apparently it can vaporize in an instant and Niantic will do truly nothing to assist you.
On October 22 I opened the game to play. It asked me to log in. No big deal, this happens occasionally if I’m somewhere with a weak signal, or was last time I played.
I select Google login, as always. My account appears on the list, I select it, and then I receive a message from the game that the account requested doesn’t exist and to please check that I’m entering the correct information.
Long story short. My L40 account that I’ve played daily since 2016 is gone. My google account is intact, has had no security notifications, and is what I’ve been using to communicate with what passes as technical support at Niantic. (I’m sorry, but I refuse to accept “it’s gone” as a complete and helpful conclusion.)
This has been an absolute nightmare. They’ve provided zero assistance, and have now declared that I’ve reached as high as their support capabilities go. I would think it was impossible if someone else described the situation to me, and yet here I find myself.
Enjoy the game as long as you can. Spend money knowing that it may disappear in a blink, and they apparently “can’t do anything to help you”.
UPDATE May 4, 2019: Trainers, it seems like some players are losing their accounts for the second time this year (as per reports from April 24, and reports from May 4, 2019).
Reports are coming in that active high-level players are unable to sign in and the following message pops up:
Unable to sign in. Please check that this Pokemon Go account exists and you have correctly selected New or Returning Players.
On their second attempt to log in, the game takes them back to a new level 1 account, with the same username as their lost account, but this time they can only catch starters. What is interesting is that the lost account is still visible to other players on their friend lists as Lvl 40.
One Pokemon Go player lost his account on April 24, 2019 and did everything he could to bring it back. Unfortunately, without luck so far.
Spadesix: This happened to my level 40 account on April 24th. Facebook login and linked. I know my password, I’m logged in Facebook. Tried uninstall and reinstall, no luck. Emailed Niantic April 25th, no response besides the automatic. Never putting real money into a Niantic game again. The game since launch has been buggy, and basically, I’ve got nothing to show for spending hours and hours into my game. I’ve been hoping for the best up until now but, if this is even happening to 100 people, that’s 100 too many. If it was that few, a company that makes billions should have the resources to respond properly….
The cause behind this is still unknown, but we hope to see an answer and a fix from Niantic ASAP.
UPDATE January 19, 2019: Niantic Support responded on this issue and confirmed these accounts are not deleted, it’s just a bug and they are working on it.
u/NianticGeorge: Thanks for kicking off this conversation, u/StrangeFreak, and thanks to everyone for your patience while we investigate this issue. We’re sorry for not providing an update earlier.
We’re aware of an issue that’s preventing a subset of Trainers from being able to log into Pokémon GO. If you’re affected by this issue, you’ll see a message indicating that you’re unable to get game data from the server. Don’t worry, your account hasn’t been deleted!
We are hard at work untangling this sticky situation, both to resolve the immediate login issue and address the impact that it is having on Gyms with Pokémon from affected accounts, as well as identify the root cause to prevent this situation from happening in the future.
We have begun the process of restoring access to those accounts that are unable to log in and resolving the issue with affected Pokémon in Gyms. Please bear with us, as this will take some time to fully complete.
Your understanding is truly appreciated, we’ll be providing more updates to impacted Trainers as information becomes available.
PREVIOUS STORY January 18, 2019: Trainers, reports are coming in that players are losing their accounts over a bug and no one knows what is causing this, not even Niantic.
Many players tried to log into the game and an error saying “Failed to game data from the server” popped up on their screen and players are getting locked out of the game. Most of them reached out to Niantic searching for an answer, but Niantic is not responding. Pretty much they are leaving their best players out in the cold.
But that’s not all. This bug has a side-effect – the game will crash to anyone who will interact with any Gym that has a Pokemon from the “dead accounts.”
So, is there a way to know which Gym is “affected” because I don’t want my game to crash? I’m really sorry, but no.
An Lvl40 Pokemon Go player lost his account a few days ago. He contacted Niantic and here is the reply:
Hi Trainer,
Thanks for your patience, we’ve identified your account as one of a small subset of players who have been experiencing this issue.
We know how disruptive this is to your Pokémon GO experience and we’re working to resolve this as quickly as we can.
As more information becomes available, we’ll reach out to update you directly.
He kept on trying and he didn’t receive any answer until today:
Hi Again,
I can understand your eagerness in accessing your Pokémon GO account. That being said, currently, we do not have any update on the issue that you are facing. We are collecting similar reports from other players as well to fix this issue effectively.
Your understanding and patience towards this situation will be highly appreciated as our team is already investigating this issue.
Have a nice day!
Now, I know sometimes they ask us to be patient and everything will be okay eventually, but when you spend real money on a game and ended up losing your account without reason and explanation, that’s when things get serious.
This has to be concerning to Niantic and I really hope these players will receive a ton of in-game rewards!
It is always something new, old bugs reappearing..
New bugs coming into the game, one never knows if something is a bug or a feature.
This serious bug however should not be happening.
Most high level players have spent REAL money on this game, get no real support nor some sort of reimbursement from Niantic.
It’s time that they show their loyal players some respect and make up to those which suffer from these bugs.
A lot of players are leaving as they’re losing their patience, with standard and also false replies from “customer service”.
I lost my account last year and Crapantic was no help at all got the same msg make sure this account exists and it was linked to my gmail and facebook accounts I disappeared off of all my friends list
This really sucks. My girlfriend and I have been playing together since Dec.2017 an have done a lot of community days my favorite and now most disappointing was the Totodile community day. I hadn’t done one one of these before spent 6+ hours out (had the wrong start time at first). The past few weeks I’ve noticed that all of my shiny Totodile’s were miss and so are my girl friends. I know I didn’t trade or transfer any of the because my girlfriend was my only friend in the game until just last month. An my first trade to one was just 2 days ago.I was over excited to even have a shiny cause I have bad luck finding them, but for all of mine and my girlfriends shines to just go miss make no sense. It also sucks that I see other people are getting the cold shoulder even with their accounts. We as players invest time money and energy into this game for bugs in the code or updates to completely screw us over. What’s even more sad is they told me there is nothing they can do an it was my fault they are gone but they can check everything about someone’s account but can’t check things like this. Like come on if I had a holographic Charizard card do I really look like I would accidentally trade that to someone. shinies in Pokemon go are as rare as holographic cards I’m sure everyone like myself would take precautions not to transfer or trade without being sure this is something they wanted.
I am experiencing the same thing. After doing a little digging, I conclude that my account has been hacked. Niantic gives people the ability to change linked Gmail without noticing the original email linked to the game account has been changed and, doesn’t give link to the original email to reverse its proses (this is how Gmail and other prevent anybody’s account being hacked). As long as the Pokemon account is linked to any two login method, anyone of them can be unlinked. I try to present the proof of ownership such as billing that I charged the last years or so, the original emails that I regain access to, and the fact that all my friend’s has been removed. I got in touch with Niantic and they said my account is still active under different email address. However, Niantic just don’t care about it and reply me on email that they can’t help me and just don’t care about its player being hack and blame all the mistakes to the player . I hope someone can do something about it as I have spent time and money for the account
Same thing happened to me, really disgusting by Niantic.
Did it get resolved? It just happened to me today.
I was a level 31 with so many shinies and now I can’t t log in into my account . Niantic has so much money and cannot fix these bugs .
I had this same thing happen to me on the morning Rayquaza came back. So the day an update took place, I got the same message as above…. My account is marked new or returning player….
Everyday now we go in circles as they say I must have let my account information get vulnerable and someone changed my email even though my 40 level character is still stuck with the same last catch I made… So that turned me into a level 1 character and its on me so they
Can’t help me fix it.
I show them I can still log and get level 1, my friends still see me at level 40 with same last catch.
If anyone knows someone who can help me or who I can contact to get better help. I can share days of them asking the same question and giving me the same answer.
I spent all this time getting my character to level 40 and it’s all gone and they just wipe there hands of the problem instead of helping me.
is this issue “ Unable to sign in. Please check that this Pokemon Go account exists and you have correctly selected New or Returning Players.“ solved? my L40 account got this message, couldn’t login at all…
if i can get help would be appreciated
I signed into my account today and it’s started back to level 1 . Niantic sucks because they just send a computer generated email. They are of absolute no help.%$&#@%#
So I just came across this article, something similar happened to me, I have 2 account, didn’t log into my second for a while, tried to log in only to be told my account doesn’t exist, having checked my friends list on my main account and my friends account and could see my account username had been changed, contacted Niantic who told me the account doesn’t exist, sent them as much proof that I had that the account was mine, even showing them it was linked to my google account but they did noting they got back showing me the email had also been changed, thus why not having access to the account, their answer was, once its been compromised that was it, they cant do anything, honestly such a f*****g s**t company and system they have in place. I get it its a game and loosing the account doesn’t bother me as much as the answer Niantic gave me for why it was my fault, not admitting they f****d up.
I’m having this same problem and I’m geting no help form anyone
I’m not sure but this may have happened to me after updating my app today. I have emailed naintic about it am awaiting a reply.
In this case, I had an old account that I thought was gone before setting up the current one I am trying to find now. I fired up my app today and found I couldn’t log in with it. I got the message to “make sure you have an pokemon GO account with this email.” Now, my old L16 account is back, but the one missing is L25 and I had way more and way better pokemon.
I hope they will find my account but as I lost mine right after an update, it sounds more like the problem described in this article.
I will update if that changes.
Yesterday when they had a new update think the festival or something was going to start this happened to me, got logged out from my account, my brother says my account is still on his friends list, Kingincia level 35 or something… I have logged in to google, facebook and ‘continue with apple’, all 3 started a character from level 1.
Support is slow as usual and still no comments from them.
Yes I have also spent money on this account and seems strange it just ‘disappears’. I had two mewtwos and a bunch of legendaries.
Wow so did it ever get resolved. My account is gone this morning. I’ve played for a little over a yr now but spent a bit of money on this game as well .
My L25 account is now showing “make sure account exists” too. The only thing that happened was that I accidentally hit the ‘Logout’ button during the app startup, then apparently typed the wrong pw when trying to login again — until it warned that the account would be locked for 15 minutes. I waited, tried again but it still failed. So then I logged-in to the Trainer Club web-site and reset my password. Now the app shows the “make sure” message.
So I think I must’ve triggered some protection mechanism.
I emailed their tech-support but all I’ve received is the auto-reply. So I am not going to spend any money on my kids’ Pokemon Go games — sorry, Niantic!
Hello there, This is Rapt0rKing L40 Mystic, Even im facing the same issue, I returned to game after almost an year and shocked to see my gmail login is saying “see if this ac exists” Im shocked !! I had been playing Pokemon Go game since it was released in INDIA, Also i have made it to level 40 by playing it for day night for 2 YEARS, Invested ALOT of money :0 & I’ve participated lot of leagues as well, My account has > 120+ Maxed of Legendary specially TMd for competitive leagues > Have bunch of hundo shinies and rare unown > I was BIG COLLECTOR of rare mons with least CPs and > Oldest Movesets from 2016. I’m So panicked, I tried mailing niantic with previously taken screenshots of all pokemon collection, My avtar, Playing since date proof and just getting computer based auto replies. Nothing’s working. I cannot go My all Time, Money & Efforts go in vain like this. So please keep on updating if anyone got any update regarding this. Otherwise just form a WHATSAPP GROUP & lets unite all the honest victim of this Bug amd report in mass _/\_
Still happening in 2024.