Niantic has introduced several changes for Pokémon Go. Two of them concern the popular long-distance raids. More than 20,000 users have signed a petition against Niantic and are demanding another change.
During the corona pandemic, Niantic offered “long-distance raids” the option to fight together with players even at great distances. But many feared that Niantic would remove this pass again or at least adjust it significantly.
Now Niantic wants to drastically increase the price of remote raid passes and wants to severely cap the number of remote raids you can join per day. But the players are upset about the change to the long-distance raids. Thousands of players have now joined forces.
Petition against Niantic has already collected almost 30,000 signatures
What is required? Beginning April 6, boycott participants are scheduled to reduce interaction with in-game raids for a week. However, other players are already planning to permanently delete the app once the changes go live.
A petition started by a player now has almost 30,000 signatures. This is intended to show how negatively the changes presented should affect the game and the community.
As the petition states (via Change.org):
Niantic Inc. and the developers of Pokémon GO have decided to drastically increase the price of ranged passes and limit the number of ranged passes you can participate in per day. This affects the majority of Pokémon GO players, who have enjoyed this aspect of the game since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when we were all forced to stay indoors and couldn’t play the game the way it was meant to be played.
This includes people with disabilities, parents, immunocompromised individuals and many more. This community has come together in the past to speak out against accessibility issues, and with this petition we hope we can show Niantic that they need to turn back
Many complain that the changes would simply go past the players. Because especially disabled people and gamers who live in the country and have little chance of raids would suffer from the higher prices.
On top of that, some complain that this would encourage scammers to continue cheating and spoofing (via reddit.com).
What’s next? Many now hope that the petition will cause Niantic to rethink. However, it is questionable whether this will actually happen. Because so far, Niantic has not commented on the criticism. We’ll keep you updated when we know more about it.
Pokémon Go players have been asking for more accessibility for a long time. At that fall event, Niantic accidentally brought a change into play that certain games in particular needed:
With the Halloween event, Pokémon Go accidentally brings a feature that some players desperately needed