Expat sacked after online rant about Singapore not having Pokémon Go

An expat Australian has been sacked from his job in Singapore after unleashing a tirade of online abuse at the country for not having access to Pokémon Go

Sonny Truyen, from Melbourne, was let go from property site 99.co after venting his disgust that the GPS app game wasn’t available in Singapore, Mashable reports.

“You can’t f---ing catch pokemon in this piece of f---ing s--- country,” Mr Truyen wrote in a Facebook post.

After the company received complaints over Mr Truyen’s comments, 99.co management terminated his contract. Mr Truyen had started his role as the website’s vice president of digital marketing a week ago.

99.co chief executive Darius Cheung posted an apology and said the company does not “condone such language or behaviour”.

In a statement to Mashable, Mr Truyen admitted his online diatribe was “a very big error in judgement”.

“It was a d---k move on my behalf and a very big error in judgement to negatively label an entire country over Pokémon. It was very wrong of me to rage like that,” he said.

While some online users have commended Mr Cheung for his swift decision to fire Mr Truyen, others believe the rant is just a clever marketing ploy to take advantage of the game’s popularity.

Shares in Japan’s Nintendo have experienced a sharp spike since the launch of the mobile game, with the company’s market value topping $10 billion in just two days.

Pokémon Go is a free-to-play, GPS-based reality mobile game based on the 1990s fictional characters called Pokemons.