Pokemon GO Player's Shiny Gible is Being 'Held Hostage' in Abandoned Gym

gamerant.com:

A Pokemon GO player who left their Shiny Gible in a gym has realized that getting them back could prove to be a problem. They shared their thoughts with other Pokemon GO fans, who seemed largely sympathetic, and offered some idea of how long the player might have to wait. While it's not mandatory by any means, participating at Pokemon Gyms offers a lot of benefits to players. If a player comes across a gym that's controlled by another team, they can fight the Pokemon there to take over the gym for their own team. When happening upon a gym that's already controlled by one's own team, the player can choose to support the Pokemon there or add their own if there's a vacancy. This is what one player did far from home, only to realize that they might not get their rare Pokemon back.

Reddit user Hour-Preparation-637 shared their story with fellow fans, explaining that they had recently traveled across several states in order to witness the solar eclipse. During their trip, they found a campground Pokemon Gym that had been controlled by their team for nearly 200 days at that point. The gym was populated with Shiny Pokemon, so Hour-Preparation-637 thought it would be a great idea to add their own Shiny Pokemon to help defend it. However, once they went home, they realized that they didn't have any way of retrieving their Pokemon and wondered how long it might be until they got to see it again.

Hour-Preparation-637 asked other players what the maximum amount of time they'd had a Pokemon 'held hostage' in a gym before. Plenty of players replied, with the responses varying wildly in length. While some players who live in populated areas have only had their Pokemon leave them for a matter of hours at most, several went hundreds of days without seeing their Pokemon. A couple users went nearly four years before they finally got their Pokemon back. Outside of the Reddit post, one of the longest known records for holding a gym in Pokemon GO is a Weedle that defended a Pokemon Gym