French Mayor Bans Pokémon Go from Village

The mayor of a French village has banned the phenomenally popular mobile game Pokémon Go in order to preserve the locale’s tranquillity, and has effectively accused the game’s developer, Niantic Labs, of invading the municipality without permission. Fabrice Beauvois, mayor of Bressolles in Eastern France, has prohibited people from hunting for Pokémon within the village over safety concerns and has petitioned Niantic to remove any pocket monsters within the region from the game’s map.

“When a cafe or a restaurant owner wants to open a business in any French town, they have an obligation to request prior authorization to the mayor,” Beauvois told The Associated Press. “The rule applies to all people wishing to set up an activity or occupy a space on a public property. So it applies to Niantic as well, even though their settlement is virtual.”

Beauvois fears that Pokémon Go – which he brands “contagious” – could become a “dangerous addiction” which threatens to impede the social order in his “quiet” village, the blame for which he puts squarely on Niantic. “[Niantic developers] use the entire planet as a playground,” he said.

Niantic has already been forced to remove Pokéstops from sensitive areas, such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Japan’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Cambodia’s genocide museum.