Keep an eye out on what you’re deleting if you’re dealing with Niantic games because you might have just deleted your Pokémon Go account without realizing it.
A Twitter user reported this issue on May 11 when they deleted their Peridot account, a new game from Niantic. Unexpectedly, the deletion of their Peridot account also resulted in the deletion of their Pokémon Go account as well.
A Reddit thread was created talking about this over at r/pokemongo, where Reddit users theorized as to why it happened.
One Reddit user commented that they almost made the same mistake when they tried deleting their Peridot account. They were sent an email to confirm the deletion but it mentioned that going forward with it will also mean that their email address can no longer be used with Niantic. This ultimately stopped them from proceeding.
This can get confusing as the in-game prompt allegedly reads that you’re deleting your Peridot account and not your Niantic account—this will only be clarified when you receive the email. It’s no surprise that Niantic accounts are linked with each of the company’s games as this is an easy way for it to access player data, but it seems shortsighted to not let players delete individual game accounts.
The Twitter post has also garnered attention. People are replying, sympathizing with the player and raising awareness for them in hopes that it might serve as a warning to others. Fortunately, an update from the Twitter user has confirmed that they’ve successfully recovered their account.
While they’ve been lucky to be able to recover their account, some might not be. Because of this, make sure you’re reading everything being presented to you when it comes to deleting accounts and even creating ones on new services.
Update May 12 6:25pm CT: Niantic provided the following statement to Dot Esports, along with a link to a corresponding support article: “Deleting your Niantic account in one game will not delete your accounts in other Niantic games.”
