Looks like hatching them wasn’t painful enough.
In Pokémon Go, hatching eggs slow process which you accept for the chance to get Pokémon you pretty much won’t find otherwise. But right now, some players find their game not slowed down, but stopped cold in the face of eggs posing as Gym leaders.
Reports around the web suggest players are finding eggs stationed as gym leaders, specifically, for some Team Instinct gyms around NYC.
Unlike more elaborated “API” hacks like those of the multiple bots and trackers apps of recent weeks, this one is quite simple:
The eggs are actually treated as “Pokémon” when selecting what to leave defending a Gym, you just can’t see them. The hack removes this restriction that stops you from choosing eggs when assembling a Gym team.
The little problem is, eggs aren’t Pokémon yet, so no moves, no HP, and no way to actually engage in battle with them.
Due to this oversight, there isn’t a “Plan B” in the game’s code for “illegal” gym battles, and the result is the Gym simply crashing and not doing anything when you try to enter the battle.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEflJCtpiac]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRDud0E7dvY]
It’s a given Niantic needs to address this issue immediately, unlike the spoofing and tracking apps that go against the spirit of the game and only affect the player in question, this little hack outright stops other innocent players from advancing.
This is, of course, only a new front for Niantic’s offense against hackers all around the world, which have demonstrated to easily be the most efficient bunch, having caused no less than 2 emergency updates to patch security holes in just 5 weeks of the game’s launch.
Maybe they just strive to be the very bests, like no one ever was. Or maybe Niantic needs some help they didn’t plan for, considering their need to remove the “3 steps” in-game mechanic to conserve server resources (which couldn’t properly handle it anyway). Probably both.
In any case, if you happen to find an Egg Gym, don’t sweat it too much, as Niantic loses no time issuing bans. What you can do, however, is help fixing this mess by sending Niantic a report here.
Also, you shouldn’t try it out yourself unless you are willing to risk a permaban.