When Foursquare decided to build an completely separate app for check-ins and strip the “gamification” element out of the flagship app, there was a lot of head scratching. Unbundling confusion.

One of the biggest complaints about Swarm for the past year or so has been the fact that Foursquare changed the way it handles location mayorships. With Swarm, mayorships have a smaller scope – users compete against their friends for mayorships – not the public at large as it was with the old Foursquare.

Well, until now. Real mayorships are back.

“The rules are simple: you’ll be the Mayor of a place if you’ve checked in more than anyone else in the last 30 days. Only 1 check-in per day counts and ties go to the reigning mayor. We’ve been tallying all of your check-ins from the past month, so go see if you’ve already proven yourself worthy of the Mayor crown at your local spots,” says Foursquare.

We knew this was coming. Last month, Foursquare caved and began to reintroduce some of the elements into Swarm that made the original Foursquare app fun in the first place – more stickers, leaderboards, and of course, true mayorships.