I’ve heard about The Silph Road Radio recentlz which seem to be preparing an app for raid meetups. But I’ve developed an iOS app the last three weeks to fix the problem for organizing meetups to fight in raids together for Pokémon GO players. It was released today to the App Store, it’s completely free (and even open source) so you’re welcome to check it out: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/raid-meetup-for-pokémon-go/id1260324549?&mt=8
My goal was to provide a way to meet up for raids in a way that is safe and transparent. You can provide gyms & raids right within the app and organize meetups. Also, you can find and attend meetups organized by others. There’s even an option to set push notifications on specific gyms so you don’t miss any meetup.
What do you think of it? Would you use it? Do you miss any features? Just let me know!
AFTER FLAG UPDATE:
This post was flagged by the community, probably by people who don’t need the app and think this is only advertisement. First: I’m not earning any money from this app, I even have to pay quite something for the servers, so “advertisement” really is only something to be flagged if it doesn’t help the community and has to do with having profits for the poster. This is clearly not the case.
Also, I opened this topic into the category “Gym Battles” which is a perfect fit and as you can see from the likes count, there are quite some people who really need an app like this. To be sure, I’ve changed the title so any app for organizing raid meetups would fit into this topic. I hope that it will not be flagged again, it would really be a disservice for Pokémon Go players …
My goal is, again, to get a working solution as fast as possible and improve it from there. Thank you for the great feedback on the iOS version until now! Let’s fight those raids together.
Hi @ShireenPlaysYT, thank you for the feedback. Good to hear that you like the app!
Actually, I’ve already talked to a lawyer about this topic and he gave me clear advice: Using UI elements such as icons and colors from another app is not illegal in any way except for if the icon was registered as a trademark like company logos usually are. For example, a Pokéball would be a registered trademark by The Pokémon Company. But the raid icon within Pokémon GO isn’t a registered trademark, so there’s no chance the app is going to be removed because of that even if they would register it now since I released the app before they did.
Many people have advised me otherwise but I’m reluctant to make use of any of Niantics APIs – as they do not explicitly allow it, it simply is illegal to use it and any app that is doing so (and therefore is including all gyms, Pokestops, raids etc.) in my opinion is illegal. I have deliberately decided to not use them but instead let the community enter Raids and other required information. As of now there’s even not the possibility to enter the raids Pokémon name because Pokémon names are registered trademarks. We might add them sometime in a way though that counts as “referential mention” which again is allowed so long as it’s not part of the apps main content. In any case my point here is: I don’t think Niantic has any reason to remove the app – I think it’s just the opposite! Having this app around (and having the Android app which is currently in development) would increase the number of users participating in raids and therefore needing Raid Passes and purchasing more from their app.
Long story short: I’m pretty aware of such legal problems that might arise and I’m trying my best to be a good citizen in any way, starting from making the app open source to listening to feedback. So if you find anything that you think is not right, please tell me. But AFAIK the logo isn’t an issue.
