On Friday evening, a major event ran for Pokémon GO, attracting trainers with promo codes. The codes provided free items. However, they were surprisingly limited and excluded many trainers.
What kind of event was it? On Friday night, the four-hour stream of the Mobile Games Show kicked off with famous German-speaking influencers Kalle, Shurjoka, Marius Angeschrien, and Rezo. They competed against each other in various games related to Pokémon GO, LoL Wild Rift, Gumslinger, and Cats in Time.
The team from Pokémon GO announced beforehand that during the stream, 10 promo codes would be released, which each trainer could redeem up to 5. Attracted by this news, trainers waited on Friday evening for the new promo codes and were then severely disappointed.
Promo codes only redeemable limited, thousands left empty-handed
What the codes were supposed to provide: Each code redeemed by trainers grants the account 50 Poké Balls, a lure module, and an incense. With up to 5 promo codes, each trainer could have secured 5 incenses, 5 lure modules, and 250 balls. An exciting prospect that prompted many trainers to take time for the live event on Friday evening.
What the problem was: Shortly after the first promo codes were released around 6:17 PM, some trainers noticed that the codes were not working for them. They were invalid, as indicated by the error message. However, some trainers reported that they were able to redeem the codes.
Within an hour, all 10 promo codes were released. Some trainers could only redeem one to four of them, not the hoped-for five. A bad mood spread in the community. What was the problem?
Apparently, Niantic had set a limit on the codes. Each individual code could only be redeemed by a specific number of trainers. Once that number was reached, the code became invalid.
In practice, this meant that a new code was exhausted within about 5 minutes (sometimes less). So, anyone who was in the chat or with us in the live ticker and did not redeem the code immediately was left empty-handed. Given the reactions in the community, this was the case for some trainers.
What the players say: We have some reactions to the event on MeinMMO.
- erzi222 writes: “Wow, what a stupid event …”
- Micruli says: “As always with this game, it was a total disaster. I could redeem one code, my friends couldn’t redeem even a single one.”
In our Facebook group, the event and the invalid codes are also a major topic:
Also on Twitter and reddit, the action circulated. Occasionally, trainers showed that they were successful in redeeming a few codes. Rarely does someone say that five codes worked.
Conclusion: The promo code action was a good idea that unfortunately was very limited in its execution. In the YouTube stream, where the codes were distributed, there were about 1,500 active viewers in the first hour. When the moderators then announced in the chat that the last codes were distributed and that Pokémon GO would be concluded as a topic, the viewer count dropped to about 500.
The players’ desire to obtain free items through promo codes was and still is great. We experience this here on MeinMMO again and again when new promo codes appear outside of such events.
That Niantic limited the codes to the extent that many thousands of trainers could not redeem a single code is a questionable decision. We hope that future events of this kind will go better.
Did you get lucky? Let us know here on MeinMMO in the comments if you were part of the stream or our live ticker and how many codes you managed to secure. Do you think it’s good that only the fastest trainers were rewarded, or should Niantic come up with a different solution for events of this type next time?
Share your opinion with the community here.
