Pokemon GO might have been one of the most talked about games of the year, but Niantic isn’t leaving it at that. Dataminers have found evidence of some of the new features headed to the mobile game, namely the ability to walk your Pokemon.
Surfacing on a Github repository, Aeonucid’s POGOProtos (via Pokemon GO Hub), the new details all come from the recent 0.35.0 update. Though it doesn’t do anything just yet, the added code makes reference to Buddy Pokemon and the ability to walk with that Buddy Pokemon for candy. In this way, players could select a Pokemon to walk with and then receive candy for going certain distances, thereby helping you level it up.
The feature seems to use the same distance calibration as the eggs you must walk a certain distance in order to hatch.
There even seems to be different looks for your Buddy Pokemon, including medium size, big size, flying next to you, and resting on your shoulder. Since the changes are already in the code, look for the feature to become active in an update soon.
Earlier this week, Niantic began lifting some of the Pokemon GO bans, saying new advances in their systems can now better detect which cheating users are being the most harmful to the game and the developer’s servers. Now only the harmful users will be banned.