And who is going to pay for all those extra years those people stay alive? :p

https://www.tektonikamag.com/index.php/2016/10/12/valor-international-study-pokemon-go-a-plague-on-office-productivity/

Since the US launch of the wildly popular Pokémon Go App on July 6, companies have experienced a massive and concerning decline in business productivity. According to a recently released study by Valor International, Pokémon in the office has had an enormous impact on productivity metrics and late task delivery.

“We surveyed more than 2,000 businesses and found a significant trend toward productivity declines,” says Dr. Sarah Willow, VP of research for Valor International. “Using broad-based productivity metrics like revenue per employee and customer satisfaction scores, we can conservatively estimate that businesses are performing 32 percent worse than they did in June.

Cool. Hopefully more games that involve going out for a walk are released.

Welp, time to eat more food, fap and play more games to counteract such physical activity

I'll remain skeptical about this, to be honest :p

Why? It sounds like a lot, but if you consider it peaked at like 20 million active users in the US, 144 billion steps only requires those 20 million users to walk 14400 steps, which is about what the average person walks in a day. Considering people played Pokemon Go more than one day, that's pretty easily achievable.

What is impressive was Pokemon Go's uderbase. This "xxx bazillion steps" thing is just like in older call of duty's where it would say "300 billion kills, 17 billion headshots, 10 quadrillion shots fired" etc. (obviously those aren't actual numbers but in that scale. When you have millions of people playing, it doesn't require that much to achieve several billion of "x" action performed.

there are programs out there that allow your pokemon go id to travel around the world without having to leave your couch

Many could have been by car/bus/train rather than just walking..

Oh okay, so you aren't exactly doubting the figure, you're just doubting that those "steps" were real "steps". That makes sense.

Yes.. me to.. And when I think about it.. Mayby VR is perfect for just that.. get us "up" and playing.

Ontopic.. Pokemon Go is.. no matter how you spin it.. Bigger than the chiness wall

Steps?? You mean cheating to move your character without walking or driving
Hell the most effective way to play the game is to find a popular area with a bunch of stops and put lures on them and then just sit back and chill.