The Google Map Maker community in Vietnam is calling on Pokemon Go players to stop trying to create non-existent locations or moving public places around on their map.

Players go out to catch Pokemon characters

Google Map Maker is a service that allows users to edit its map. Changes to Google Map Maker can appear on Google Maps only after sufficient review by Google moderators. Recently, the admin of Vietnam's Google Map Maker had to go to Facebook and call on Pokemon Go players to stop meddling with the map.

Pokemon Go arrived in Vietnam a few days ago and players already took notice that the Pokemon characters, the Pokestops and Pokegyms mostly appear in the city centre, leaving people in the suburbs or some provinces frustrated.

Since the Pokestops or Pokegyms are often placed at public places like schools, parks or shopping centres, many players have tried to create non-existent locations or moved a whole park next to their houses via Google Map Maker.

Le Bach, admin of Vietnam's Google Map Maker community, said it started after some website shared hacks on how to catch Pokemons without getting out of the house.

"At first, the team could still moderate it. But after that we have been spammed with virtual locations and we are overloaded. Sometimes, we have detected like thousands of virtual locations created every minute. Please stop destroying the map for Pokemon Go," he said.

In his post to the players, Bach said the data was a contribution of many people, many of them had travelled far, to remote areas, and it was also the effort of thousands of people that had reviewed and maintained the map's accuracy.

Google representative in Vietnam said that Google Translate and Google Map Maker allow users to contribute their knowledge to improve the service quality. However, not every change will be used immediately. Google Maps data is built from many sources including satellite images and road views pictures for cross references.

The Google Map Maker is a community of enthusiastic members from all around the world. However, Le Bach is not an employee of Google so his view does not represent Google.

The representative refused to comment on the game, saying that it's not a product of Google but Ninantic Labs, a former start-up company under Google.