In Pokémon GO, community trainers are responding to the changes to long-distance raids by collecting signatures. As the new milestone shows, players are persistent.
What are these changes? The changes to long-distance raids that the developers at Niantic announced about a week before have been active since April 6th. This includes:
In the community, these changes were mostly very bad. Affected players who enjoy participating in long-distance raids are outraged and are threatening to delete the game forever. An open letter from the community followed, numerous tweets and comments and a collection of signatures.
Signature collection cracks important intermediate goal
That is new: We already reported on the collection of signatures a few weeks ago. On April 5, more than 68,000 people took part.
Today, April 16 at 9:58 a.m., the petition already has 103,852 signatures (via change.org). The big milestone of 100,000 participants has now been cracked and the numbers continue to rise.
What are the signatures about? The petition’s explanation details the changes to remote raids. It is said that the signatures are intended to show the Niantic team that they should revert the changes if their community is more important to them than profit.
The petition starter, Ali Vongsathian, explains that since the COVID-19 pandemic, many trainers are using these remote raids and remote raiding has grown more and more. When making these changes to the long-distance raids, you didn’t think of the players in villages that hardly have arenas with raids or other players.
They would also not have considered what the price hike and daily limit would mean for players who don’t have the privilege of leaving their homes to play a game. This includes people with disabilities, parents and many more, the petition description says.
What does Niantic say about this? After the open letter from the community and the collection of signatures, the trainers are waiting for a statement from the developers. So far we only know the explanation why there are raid changes.
In the past, Niantic has shown that you can hear the players and their criticism. Backtracked on some issues based on community feedback and promised improvements in communication with the trainers.
A large part of the players is now anxiously waiting for the silence to be broken.