Pokémon Go developer Niantic Labs has caused frustration among fans for once again taking steps towards making the game more accessible before quickly walking them back.
On June 27, Niantic made Pokémon Go fully compatible with Campfire — its social app designed to link players up in-game — and also updated the game to double the catch radius from 40 metres to 80.
Both changes were heralded as Niantic taking strong strides towards improving accessibility in a game that’s often been criticised for lacking in this department, but it wasn’t long before the developer rolled back one of these changes.
In a tweet from Niantic’s support account (below), the developer said the increased spawn radius was just a mistake. “This was the unintended effect of a bug fix intended to improve the Pokémon encounter experience when your device is experiencing GPS drift,” it said. “While we’re reverting this change, we will take your feedback into consideration as we look to optimize the Pokémon encounter experience in the future.”
Some Trainers may have experienced an increase to the current interaction radius. This was the unintended effect of a bug fix intended to improve the Pokémon encounter experience when your device is experiencing GPS drift. While we’re reverting this change, we will take your…
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) June 27, 2023
Niantic also faced backlash in April for increasing the price of Remote Raid Passes — which allow players to take on collective boss battles without having to physically be there — and reducing the number available to players each day due to it making the game less accessible. This latest bout of backtracking is therefore an all too familiar occurence for some players.
“I’m honestly getting sick of Niantic toying with my feelings,” said Surfing_Arrokuda on Reddit. “We finally think they do something right, just for them to strip it away from us.”
Envyforme took to the replies: “This company doesn’t know what the f**k change management and proper testing actually is. You think for the inconvenience they’d keep it for a couple of weeks, at least until end of July. Nope. Literally the main game is their testing playground. The player base are the quality assurance testers.”
Another user explained why the increased spawn radius was so valuable. “I really liked the increased spawn radius,” said Emergency-Hunter-515 in another post. “I live in a rural area and with it being increased it helped a lot. It sucks they won’t listen to us no matter what the reason.”
“I live in a rural area and with it being increased it helped a lot. It sucks they won’t listen to us no matter what the reason.”
Makotokahn2212 compared it to another accessiblity feature that was also removed. “It’s honestly the best thing to happen to the game since remote trading. Which also got taken away,” they said. “This company really knows how to f**k good things up; it’s almost comical. Except we are the punch line.”
Prominent Pokémon Go YouTubers have also voiced their complaints, with Mystic7 (who has 2.49 million subscibers) tweeting that he “thought the Remote Raid nerf was Pokémon Go’s biggest L this year”.
Pokémon Go news website The Silph Road offered somewhat of a workaround for the issue, saying users still on version 275.0 of the game can turn off automatic updates to enjoy it a while longer, though Niantic will force the update through eventually.
IGN asked Niantic if it was aware of the complaints and if it would consider reverting the reduced radius change but was redirected to the aforementioned tweet from its support account.
Speaking to IGN in May about its decision to limit the number of Remote Raid Passes available to players each day, Niantic said it did so to stop players abusing the system and stepping away from the core message of going outside with friends.
“The changes that we made to Remote Raid Passes, this is an incredibly difficult decision to make and not one that we took lightly,” said director of Pokémon Go live game Michael Steranka. “So we did have to take action on that and we knew that it was going to be an incredibly unpopular [decision], and it’s a tough pill even for myself to swallow.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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