In my article yesterday, I wrote about the couple who supposedly caught Articuno in the Dayton, Ohio area. Many things hinted that it was a hoax: a known hack to change all of your Pokémon and a misspelled email that the couple claims came from Niantic giving them the Articuno Whether they caught the Articuno is irrelevant now. Niantic has taken away all legendary Pokémon from the players who have them and from the game entirely. In an interview with IGN, a Niantic representative said:

We recently noticed that a few Legendary Pokemon got into a few accounts when they shouldn’t have, To preserve the game’s integrity and as a measure of fairness, we have rectified the situation and revoked the legendary Pokemon from the Trainers’ accounts.

In a statement to geek.com, a representative said that the Articuno in question did not come from Niantic, but did not rule out the use of a hack in order to obtain the Articuno or that the Covey family’s Pokémon Go glitched up.

It is unknown if Niantic will ever bring Legendary Pokémon back to the game. In a sense of unfairness Niantic claimed to be avoiding by removing the Legendaries, it doesn’t seem likely that neither Articuno, nor Zapdos, nor Moltres, and neither Mew nor Mewtwo will ever be encountered by the many players who are currently playing the game right now.

Only the handheld games going from Pokémon Red and Blue all the way up to Pokémon Sun and Moon coming to the Nintendo 3DS and 2DS in November 18 will ever have this problem. Since players all have their own individual copies with the same Legendary Pokémon appearing at the same location, it is fair that one player has Articuno as Articuno is in the same location in their respective games. However, if they are released in the Pokémon Go, hopefully they will be found in hard to reach places like Antarctica, a tall mountain during a lightning storm or Mount Kilimanjaro for Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres respectively and that no players try to find them for the safety of their own lives.