Pokémon Sleep exploit sees players pretend to rack up weeks of sleep for Pokémon Go rewards
Night to see you.
Pokémon Sleep players with access to the game's £50 Pokémon Go Plus+ peripheral are pretending to sleep in order to quickly speed towards Pokémon Go rewards.
The new nap-tracking app requires you record at least 90 minutes of sleep per day - and it's this minimum which users are now recording, before manually changing the date on their phones to then record another 90 minutes, and so forth.
Repeating this method allows you to rack up rewards for recording a week's worth of sleep (albeit no less than 90 minutes at a time) in just a few hours, users writing on Pokémon fan reddit TheSilphRoad say. And doing so seems fairly straightforward, with the app's sleep sensor simply turned off and on without you actually having to be asleep.
Why are people doing this? It's all for a special Snorlax in a costume in Pokémon Go.
Connecting Pokémon Sleep to Pokémon Go requires the Pokémon Go Plus+ gadget, which connects to both apps via Bluetooth and acts as a bridge for your data between the pair.
When first connected to Pokémon Go, the Plus+ will unlock an exclusive questline in the app which requires you to track your sleep data for seven days in order to unlock the exclusive costumed Nightcap Snorlax.
Players who have rushed ahead have found four further Nightcap Snorlax are available at the end of successive weeks.
This costumed creature is only available via the Plus+ questline, and as a further draw, is available in its ultra-rare Shiny version. In Pokémon Go, the odds of receiving a Shiny of most wild Pokémon sit at a base rate of around 1/520, although its unclear what Nightcap Snorlax's chances are. (As of yet, I've not seen anyone claim to have one online.)
Of course, doing all of this negates the whole point of Pokémon Sleep, which is to encourage you to get a healthy night's slumber.
It's worth remembering that the recommended daily amount of sleep is seven hours - and that those costumed Snorlax will still be waiting for you in a few weeks' time.
Pokémon Sleep rolled out onto European app stores this week. I recently tried Pokémon Sleep for myself, and found it accurately tracked my hours of dreamtime though also rather creepily listened to me snore.