Driver Caught Playing Pokémon Go With Eight Phones

Back in 2016, Pokémon Go took the world by storm with its simple yet addictive gameplay loop. At the height of its popularity, in fact, you couldn’t get through a single day without seeing Niantic’s mobile game make the headlines. Catching ‘Em All, it turned out, became an infinitely more entertaining pastime when Pokéfans were able to share their adventures with other players while out and about on their daily travels. Parks, bars, libraries – you name it, the craze was everywhere, though not every public space was happy to see the masses glued to their phones.

In fact, it didn’t take long before reports of incredible stupidity prompted that wave of goodwill to rapidly diminish. Tales of players trespassing on private property and playing while driving circulated like wildfire, prompting Niantic to introduce warnings in-game to combat such instances. Thankfully, as the fad period has tapered off and Pokémon Go‘s player base has reduced to a smaller – but healthy – number, such stories have become less frequent.

From time to time, however, one will stumble upon a bizarre situation such as that encountered by Washington State Patrol Sergeant Kyle Smith. Relaying the events that passed over on Twitter, Trooper Rick Johnson details how Smith, having “contacted a vehicle on the shoulder” discovered that the driver was playing Pokémon Go not just on one phone, but eight.

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As noted by Johnson, the owner of the vehicle wasn’t driving at the time of the encounter and therefore no further action was taken beside a request for the driver to place all eight devices on the back seat. Judging by the image taken by Smith at the time, it appears as if the player was smack-bang in the middle of a raid battle, somewhat explaining the impressive phone collection.

Difficult as they are as endgame activities, raid battles require a team of players to cooperate in defeating its boss. The subject of this story, it seems, had simply bypassed the need for other people by having eight different accounts running at once.

Now that’s what you call dedication.