Despite years of back and forth with a unified community begging for support, Niantic has finally decided to gut Remote Raid Passes. Starting this week, the price of Remote Raid Pass bundles will increase from 300 (already up from 250 several months ago) to 525, while the price of single passes will increase from 100 to 195. Additionally, players will be limited to a total of five Remote Raids per day. This change will significantly limit the accessibility of Pokemon Go for disabled players, rural players, and those living in areas that aren't safe to walk around in. It's going to be catastrophic for many segments of the player base and I don't see how Pokemon Go can come back from this.In the , Niantic writes, "Since their introduction in 2020, Remote Raid Passes have come to dominate the experience of playing Pokemon Go in a way we never intended." The developer goes on to say that while it doesn't make this decision lightly, it believes this is a "necessary step toward our goal of preserving and improving the unique experience of playing Pokemon Go."Last year, when Niantic started rolling back the bonuses that were added to make playing easier during the pandemic, live game director that it was important that Pokemon Go maintain its identity - the so-called three pillars of exploration, exercise, and social interaction. The Remote Raid Pass circumvents all of those goals, so while it served a purpose for a time, Niantic feels its necessary to excise that feature from the game.I can respect Niantic’s commitment to stay true to what Pokemon Go is supposed to be, but I think it would be naive to take this excuse at face value. Niantic is a location data company, and it generates untold value from the collection of player data. It needs players to get out ℱand move around so it can collect all of that sweet sweet location data from them. The loss of revenue from limiting how many Remote Raids Passes playe🐭rs can buy and the alienation of the community must be worth the trade-off to Niantic, but I don’t think it’s really about protecting the integrity of the game.
Whatever the value of the location data is, it must be a lot, because the player base feels comp🐭letely betrayed by this decision, and understandably so. Make no mistake, this isn’t solely an attack on those that would prefer to sit at home and circumvent the intentions of the game. It hurts players who can’t be active due to health reasons or physical limitations, and it hurts players who live in places that aren’t populated enough to form local communities. Pokemon Go has always been tailored for people who live in big, walkable cities, and this change will make it even harder for everyone else to play.
I’m among the players that benefit from Remote Raid Passes, but not because I use them myself. In suburban Southern California where no one walks anywhere, I struggled for years to find active raids that had enough players to successfully defeat the raid boss. Once I disc🎶overed the PokeRaid app, I started hosting virtual raids in my area. I was doing all the things Niantic wants me to do: I was getting exercise, exploring my area, and being social - through the PokeRaid chat system at least - but with the limitation on daily raid passes, I won&rs𓆏quo;t be able to host raids as much as I used to, if at all.
Players threaten to quit live-service games en masse all the time, and it hardly ever sticks. It’s hard to take gamer rage and boycotts seriously when everyone eventually calms down and learns to deal with whatever changes they’re objecting to. This feels like a different situation though. Niantic opened a can of worms when it introduced Remote Raid Passes, and it can’t stuff them back in the jagged old tin now. It hasn’t done enough to level the playing field for everyone that can’t reliably raid the normal way, and now it's severely limiting (and jacking up the price) of the only option a lot of them have. After all the energy the community has put into telling Niantic that this is 🍷an importa🐓nt feature that improves the quality of the game, I won’t be surprised if this is the last straw that leads a lot of people to give up Pokemon Go for good.