Pokemon Go has been on a downward spiral since the pandemic. Before lockdowns forced everyone indoors, there were thriving communities of players all over the world. Nowadays, it seems like I have to fight to find just one person to raid with. I’m not even a rural player, who generally have it much worse than us suburban or city centre-dwelling folk.
Since remote raids were reduced, player counts fell further still. I’m talking anecdotally about my own community, of course, but I’ve seen similar sentiments echoed online across the world. I myself was a hardcore grinder, and now I play casually, only really opening the app if I’m abroad; to catch rare regional spawns or anything at all in countries where the game is banned.
However, I logged in back at home this week, as I’m trying to tick off a bunch of old special research quests and one required me to earn a heart with my buddy 20 days in a row. After failing in the late teens numerous times, I finally completed the task. Briefly elated that my time screaming at the frustrating time gate Eric Andre style was over, I noticed that the game had multiple changes. Changes that I didn’t like all that much.
Paid Tickets And Battle Passes
Paid tickets have been a part of Pokemon Go for a long time, and I don’t begrudge them. There’s always a way to play each event for free, and hardcore players can splash some cash to get more bonuses or encounters. This is a free-to-play game, it needs to make money.
However, I first got annoyed when you couldn’t buy an event pass with coins. Coins are Pokemon Go’s premium currency, but can also be earned by battling in Gyms, or more accurately, by keeping your Pokemon in them. It’s a lot of graft to get your 50 coins a day, and you should be rewarded for that by being able to buy the premium tickets to whatever event you choose. Forcing players to pay with real cash removes any incentive for free-to-play players to keep grinding, disincentivising engaging with the game’s core gameplay loop.
Worse, Unova Tour was the first Pokemon Go event to add a battle pass. Again, I’m not against battle passes in principle, but when it’s this expensive it feels like the beginning of the end. We’re talking £15 here, for an event which lasts a week. Sure, paying that money instantly gets you an encounter with Victini, but it seems so much more predatory than the previous system, where a full timed research quest would only set you back a fiver.
Timed research included a barebones story, choice-based paths, and interesting tasks to perform in order to work your way through it. Paid research was often special research rather than timed research, meaning that you could work through them at your own pace. I’m not ashamed to say I bought some of these, and I’m still working on the Jirachi and Master Ball questlines. You can’t do that with these new paid research tasks.
Pokemon Go is now preying on FOMO, engaging in predatory and exploitative practices to extract as much cash as it can from its playerbase.
Scopely Buys Pokemon Go For $3.5 Billion
Speaking of predatory and exploitative… Niantic has announced that it has sold its gaming division to Scopely, a part of the Saudi investment fund. And let’s just say that the developer doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to healthy monetisation.
Whether it’s paying to skip adverts or straight-up buying high-level items, Scopely games tend to prioritise profit over fun. I can envisage Master Balls being readily available if you pay enough money, or even Legendaries being included in the shop. Pokemon Go was already turning into a pay-to-fun game, but it could get far worse, quickly.
It feels like the beginning of the end for Pokemon Go, and my doommongering certainly isn’t helping. So are there any positives to take away from the aggressive monetisation of this sale?
The Scopely sale could make remote raiding a more exciting prospect. I imagine that the profit-focused company wouldn’t have the same rankles as Niantic when it comes to Pokemon Go’s mission to get players outside. Remote raid passes may no longer be limited to three per day. Of course, you’ll still have to buy these with money, but removing this limit could be the lifeline that rural players need to get back into the game.
It doesn’t look good for Pokemon Go at the moment, but the important thing is to remember what makes this game good. Is it your maxed out Level 50 Rayquaza? No. Is it your Lucha Libre Pikachu? Also no. Is it the shundo Kyogre you got moments after complaining that you’d never found a shundo? Okay, maybe a little. But that’s only great because of the memories surrounding it. The group of friends I was raiding with. Their incredulous reactions. Their jealousy.
Players make Pokemon Go great, and we can continue to do so. Whoever owns the game, whatever monetisation is put in place, we can engage on our own terms. We can form our own communities, we can be there for each other and make our own fun. That’s been the way this game has worked since 2016, but it’s more important now than ever before.
Next
Sizzlipede And Centiskorch Will Make Their Pokemon Go Debuts Later This Month
Niantic has confirmed the Galar ‘Dex will expand by two during this year’s Bug Out event.