Pokemon Go catching is broken thanks to new backgrounds

The entire point of Pokemon Go is to catch your favourite creatures over and over again. Unfortunately for all, Pokemon Go catching is completely broken thanks to the introduction of new backgrounds glitching during gameplay.

A new Pokemon Go update introduced brand new backgrounds to the game during the catching process. However, these new backgrounds appear to be causing an issue with the game’s moving catch ring, the graphic that tells players when to throw their pokeballs.

Over the course of the game’s eight year history, Pokemon Go has never had an issue with its catch ring. Sure, there’s been annoying event issues like the Sinnoh Tour not introducing Arceus or Niantic causing items to cost more, but the game has remained surprisingly stable.

Unfortunately, as fans on the Silph Road subreddit pointed out, the latest update to the popular free mobile game has broken the catch ring during gameplay. A New Zealand player that already has access to the new backgrounds revealed just how bad the issue is.

In a number of images, you can see the catch ring split in half and missing chunks during gameplay. This makes it incredibly difficult for players to know when they can successfully throw their balls at the game’s innocent, cuddly creatures.

The new backgrounds also seem to be hampering performance on older phones as well. Those with older phones have reported massively reduced performance in the game while catching creatures.

With the new catching backgrounds still rolling out across the world, there’s every chance that this bug could be fixed by the time we all get access to the new visuals. However, for players who do have access to the new graphical features, they can barely play the mobile game.

Following the recent Pokemon Go XP theft bug, it hasn’t been a great start to the year for Niantic’s game. However, with new Pokemon Go community dates and new March 2024 field research to do, most fans do have a lot to look forward to.

For more Pokemon news, check out the reveal of Pokemon Legends: Z-A, a game set entirely in one city. Or maybe you’re more interested in this underrated Pokemon X and Y feature fans really want to see again.

Pokemon Go is currently available to play for free right now on Android and iOS.