Pokémon Go’s no-name bug is literally breaking the game for new players

Pokémon Go players have discovered a bug that breaks the game for people setting up new accounts and leaves them without a name.

As Pokémon Go approaches its seventh birthday, odds are many of you may have forgotten what the mobile game asked of you when you first signed up. Before doing anything else, trainers are given the option of catching one of the Kanto starters or Pikachu. A newly discovered bug has other Pokémon spawning alongside them, but you probably want to avoid catching a random Pidgey over a Squirtle or a Charmander.

Shared on TheSilphRoad subreddit on Sunday, catching a Pokémon that shouldn’t be there when you first play Pokémon Go will skip the game’s tutorial. That might sound like a good thing to someone familiar with the game restarting their journey, but wait, there’s more. Skipping the tutorial means the prompt to enter your name won’t appear, and the inability to give your avatar a name is just the beginning of your problems.

Turns out, if you try to deviate from the tried and true Pokémon path, your Go account will effectively be bricked. PokéStops can seemingly be spinned but nothing happens, and the starter Pokémon you were supposed to choose from won’t reappear. If you shut the app and start it back up, you will be greeted by an empty map. There won’t even be a Pokéball icon at the bottom of the screen so you can access the menu. You quite literally won’t be able to do anything.

For trainers starting a new account who have been sharing their experiences like the player above, this is more of an annoyance than a serious issue. They can simply delete their broken account and start again. Just be careful not to delete your whole Niantic account. For more casual players who don’t know certain Pokémon appearing on their screen when they fire up the game for the first time are off-limits, it could be a bigger issue. They may catch a Girafarig rather than a Bulbasaur and wonder why the game just breaks, potentially closing Pokémon Go and never returning.

Related: How to evolve Sliggoo into Goodra in Pokémon Go

This doesn’t appear to be the first time this problem has been highlighted, but hopefully if it gets enough attention this time around Niantic will actually do something about it. Perhaps the studio is too focused on Go Fest to deal with this particular bug right now. If you have already bought your Go Fest ticket, or you buy it before July 5, you can complete research to earn an early Carbink encounter.