'Pokémon GO' updates: Trading feature expected to be live soon

A man uses a mobile phone in front of an advertisement board bearing the image of "Pokémon GO.Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo

"Pokémon GO" fans are on another level of excitement after data miners were able to discover codes that point to a trading feature. The feature is not yet enabled, but it is expected to be available soon.

'Developer Niantic has released "Pokémon GO" 0.37.1 last week, and the folks over Pokémon Go Hub got to work immediately on its globabl-metadata.dat file. From this file, they were able to find strong indications that "Trading" will soon arrive.

According to the summary of their discovery, players will be able to search "Trading Players," they can perform several actions on Trade Offers, and can primarily trade Pokémon only. Terms like PokeBalls and Potions were not discovered in the code.

However, it remains unknown if the trading will be allowed between players globally or within just the vicinity of a player. However, the code also revealed that the trading feature would still communicate with the game servers, which suggests that players could trade to any player in the world.

Fans who are expecting the Ditto Easter Egg to arrive in the game need to wait a little longer. There was no reference to the pocket monster from the latest APK version, according to previous reports.

Meanwhile, NeuroGadget stated that a multiplayer battle will also arrive in the game. This was disclosed by Tsunekau Ishihara, The Pokémon Company CEO, who earlier said that the mode is under development. Archit Bhargava, Niantic's Product Marketing Lead, later supported Ishihara's claims and said that they are testing out the battle mode feature and figuring out how to implement it.

The game is rumored to bring in more features in the future and that it is following a timetable. This will allow players to completely enjoy the game and not get overwhelmed by the numerous features.

"Pokémon GO" was released last July for the Android and iOS platforms. The free-to-play augmented reality game became a global phenomenon, achieving more than 500 million downloads globally in just a short time.

"Pokémon GO" Plus is also available as a Bluetooth accessory for the game. It allows players to perform a number of actions without using their smartphones.