The mobile game Pokémon GO initially suffered during the pandemic when people were either in lockdown areas or did not want to be in close contact with others, but introduced a new feature to allow players to participate with friends from afar: Remote Raids. Not only was this helpful for the pandemic, it was also a boon for players who needed more accessibility options and for rural players that didn’t have many nearby raid locations.
Unfortunately, even as a huge money generator for the company, developer Niantic has shown little love to Remote Raids or the expanded features they introduced because of COVID-19.
New update pushes daily limit text for Remote Raid Passes
A new update to the game pushed text indicating a daily limit for remote raids is likely to be rolled out soon. As seen in our tweet below, which was captured from my game this morning, Remote Raid Passes have a new addition to their description, “You can join {0} Raids a day.”
This continues a string of nerfs to the Remote Raid feature, including the long awaited implementation of reduced damage from people joining a Raid remotely and offering no discount for purchasing Remote Raid Passes in a set of three versus individually.
The change, which has not been completely confirmed, but is very likely, will probably have the biggest impact on people who have limited mobility and cannot get to raids easily in-person, as well as players who live outside of urban or suburban hubs and lack a decent number of Gym locations and a community that regularly challenges higher-level Raids together.
Are you playing Pokémon GO? How will this impact your gameplay routine? Let us know in the comments, on Discord or send feedback to Niantic (respectfully) about this possible change!