Desperate Chinese Pokémon trainers are buying Australian and US App Store accounts on Taobao

What's a keen Pokémon trainer to do in a country that hasn't yet been granted access to Pokémon Go?

A lot in China, it seems. Like many others desperate to try the explosively trending game, Chinese users have attempted a variety of methods of downloading the game, including sideloading it on Android devices and borrowing friends' iOS App Store accounts.

A crop of enterprising Chinese sellers have risen to the challenge. For now, the game only is available in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, so sellers are providing access to App Store accounts on China's largest online store, Taobao.

Screengrab of Taobao's listings for the search "Pokemon Go". Credit:

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Prices appear to range between 2 yuan ($0.30) and 15 yuan ($2.24) for App Store credentials. Pokémon Gois a free download after you gain access.

One of the more popular stores has sold 5,000 accounts, and a handful of top stores have sold about 1,000 accounts each.

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But users have found that they had to jump through more hoops than just successfully downloading the game to play it. Since it hasn't been rolled out officially to China yet, some users report seeing barren maps without any Pokémon on them to catch.

Nothing to see here. Credit: 咸六儿的PCY/weibo

It's been widely reported that Nintendo has blocked people with GPS locations coming from China, so some users there are spoofing their GPS locations to appear to be in the U.S. However, they risk getting banned from the game by developer Niantic, which has said it'll "suspend or terminate" accounts that violate its terms.

On Taobao, stores have added disclaimers noting that they're just for access to the App Store, and don't guarantee gameplay, so they won't offer refunds to users who can't access Pokémon Go.

This one reads: "This item sold only gives you access to the Australian App Store to download the game. This is not a Pokémon Goaccount!"

Pokémon desperation appears to have reached feverish levels since the game was released a week ago. Over the weekend in Singapore, a guy's angry rant on Facebook about not being able to play the game got him fired from his job as the head of digital marketing for a dotcom.

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