As readers might recall, a couple of weeks ago we’ve explored the story of one Tom Currie from New Zealand, who has decided to quit his job at a local café in favor of catching Pokemon in the latest hit game from Niantic and Nintendo: Pokemon GO. But as it turns out, Tom Currie (and perhaps many other Pokemon GO players who have quit their jobs without reaching the headlines) has recently been followed by another hardcore Pokemon GO trainer going by the name of Sophia Pedraza from Britain, who quit her job as a private teacher in order to try and make some money off of her Pokemon GO account.
26 years old Sophia Pedraza from High Barnet, north London, has switched gears and decided to become a so-called Poke-preneur, seeing how many other Pokemon GO players have started to make a profit by selling their accounts or services. Sophia earns up to £2,000 a month from giving private lessons in Math, Music, and English, but apparently after downloading and playing Pokemon GO, she became addicted to the game and has decided to try and make a living off of it. “I downloaded it and immediately realized there is money to be made”. “If you can get to a decent level you can sell it [the account] on to people on eBay”. She also revealed that she plans to “buy more phones and play multiple games [Pokemon GO instances] at one time” and added that “some days I play it for 18 hours a day because you can play all the time even when you’re out with your friends in bars and clubs”. Hopefully, for her friends’ sake that they’re in to Pokemon GO as much as she is then.
The Poke-preneur from Britain has decided to raise and sell Pokemon GO accounts “for as long as it makes money”, which might not be for too long considering the fact that selling, buying, and trading Gmail accounts (required to log into Pokemon GO), especially for monetary gains, goes against Google’s and Niantic’s terms of services. So far, Pokemon GO traders seem to have been able to conduct their business without Google or Niantic interfering, but it’s likely that once their other priorities will be dealt with – such as improving the game servers, updating the game with new features and releasing it in more areas – they will take measures to prevent account trading and similar practices that break the terms of service.