Playing Pokémon GO is almost impossible for the inhabitants of the Salamis Island of Greece. The game uses a map that qualifies the island as a natural park and therefore no Pokémon appear by themselves.
Pokémon Go makes us play in the real world, when we go out to get Pokémon while we walk and it shows us our surroundings in a different way. There are even special Pokémon depending on how we live in one part of the world or another, and that can work against us as it happens to the inhabitants of the Salamis Island of Greece.
Isla Salamina is not a natural park, but Pokémon do not appear
The inhabitants of this Greek island with almost 40 inhabitants in small cities have not been able to play Pokémon Go for seven months as any other player would in a moderately inhabited city. Seven months ago the game started using the information from OpenStreetsMap, but that service classified the entire island as a natural area, as if it were a protected natural park.
For safety reasons and to protect nature by not encouraging players to enter natural spaces, the game does not allow Pokémon to appear no matter how much PokéStops are nearby. These PokéStops are the only way to get Pokémon to appear on Salamis Island: using baits. But it is not a safe bet and you cannot get baits on a regular basis.
The other way to get Pokémon is to take the ferry to Athens and capture creatures there. As not everyone can afford it and those who do it are for work or travel reasons, a small community has been created dedicated to exchanging Pokémon with people who come from outside the island. That is if they are the players who remain active because many other players have completely left the game.
You can't practically play Pokémon Go on one of the largest islands in Greece. And since the number of players is not particularly large and the area is relatively isolated with having to reach Athens by ferry, Niantic does not expect to solve the problem by affecting very few people. It would be solved much faster if it were in a larger city like neighboring cities of Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, New York or Chicago.
Source: Polygon
