In Pokémon GO, the trainers from the community are responding to the changes in remote raids with a petition. As shown by the new milestone, players are persistent.
What are the changes? Since April 6, the changes to remote raids are active, which the developers at Niantic announced about a week earlier. These include:
- The price for three remote raid passes has been increased from 300 PokéCoins to 525 PokéCoins
- The price for a single remote raid pass has been increased from 100 PokéCoins to 195 PokéCoins
- Per day, you can participate in a maximum of 5 remote raid battles
The community reacted very poorly to these changes. Affected players, who enjoy participating in remote raids, are outraged and threaten to delete the game forever. This was followed by an open letter from the community, numerous tweets and comments, and a petition.
Petition surpasses important interim goal
What’s new: We already reported a few weeks ago about the petition. As of April 5, over 68,000 people had participated.
Today, on April 16 at 09:58, the petition already has 103,852 signatures (via change.org). The significant milestone of 100,000 participants has now been reached, and the numbers continue to rise.
What is the petition about? The petition’s explanation describes the changes to remote raids. It states that with the signatures, they want to show Niantic’s team that they should reverse the changes if the community is more important to them than profit.
The initiator of the petition, Ali Vongsathian, explains that many trainers have been using these remote raids since the COVID-19 pandemic and that raiding remotely has grown more and more. It was not considered that these changes to remote raids did not account for players in villages who have hardly any gyms with raids or teammates.
Furthermore, it was not taken into account what the price increase and the daily limit mean for players who do not have the privilege of leaving their homes to play a game. This includes people with disabilities, parents, and many more, as stated in the petition’s description.
What does Niantic say about it? After the open letter from the community and the petition, trainers are waiting for a statement from the developers. So far, we only know the explanation for why the raid changes exist.
In the past, Niantic has shown that they hear the players and their criticism. They have reversed decisions on some issues due to community feedback and promised improvements regarding communication with the trainers.
A large part of the player base is now anxiously waiting for the silence to be broken.
