Thousands of Pokémon GO players were hit by a network error on Friday evening, with many seeing a Network Error 2 message that blocked the game from launching or connecting. By 6:20pm EDT, more than 13,000 reports had piled up, showing the disruption had spread far beyond a routine glitch.
The search spike makes sense because the outage was active in real time and the numbers kept climbing. Down Detector showed more than 6,000 reports earlier in the evening, and more than 7,000 players were still reporting problems at 8:30pm EDT, a sign the issue had not yet cleared.
Scopely said it was investigating the problem affecting Pokémon GO gameplay and working to resolve it as quickly as possible. The company also said it would provide an update once the issue was resolved, but it did not say what caused the outage.
On Down Detector, about 62% of users said the game failed to launch, while 23% said they could not log in and 13% reported server issues. Network Error 2 is a generic connection message that appears when the game struggles with server links, which is why it can shut players out before they even get into the app.
The timing matters because Pokémon GO has a massive monthly active user base, estimated at 60 to 75 million, so even a short disruption can hit a huge number of players at once. For now, the key question is not whether the outage was real — the reports made that clear — but how long it will take before Scopely restores normal access.
