It’s been over a year since Niantic made the controversial decision to restrict Remote Raid Passes in Pokémon Go to five a day and increase the price—but the community is still actively in an uproar over it.
You can’t go onto a Pokémon Go social media or Reddit post without someone asking for the changes to be reverted to allow players to join raids anywhere in the world as many times as they want. Still, Niantic is steadfast in its decision to make these changes work, even if it means upsetting some of its fans.
This became acutely apparent to Dot Esports when we spoke to Pokémon Go’s director Michael Steranka, who, one year later, feels like the changes had the desired effect the team was looking for and led to the revival of some communities that almost disappeared during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I will say what we found after we made that change is exactly what we were hoping for,” Steranka told Dot Esports. “We’ve seen more in-person communities coming back together again… those local communities are flourishing in a way that we haven’t seen since pre-pandemic.”
Steranka went on to reaffirm that the changes had to reflect Niantic’s mission, which was getting players outside and meeting new people.
“As much as we want to give players that opportunity [to use remote raid passes], we’ve decided that can’t come at the expense of our mission for the game,” Steranka said. “That’s something that’s very cherished within the company at Niantic, and, you know, we’ve felt like we’ve tried to strike as good of a balance as we can, thereby still offering players the ability to do remote raids at a limited rate.”
Steranka even went on to say that the change “was super painful” to him as he used Remote Raid Passes a lot, but “in hindsight, [the Remote Raid Pass change] was definitely the right decision.”
As a person who still dislikes the changes to the Remote Raid Pass system, after talking to Steranka for quite some time on the issue, it’s clear to me that this decision isn’t one he made because he wanted to. It clashed with his beliefs and the core mission of Niantic and was a necessary change for the company’s mission to get trainers outside, meet new people, exercise, and have fun.
As Steranka put it, while the changes aren’t loved by any means, he hopes that “players that have stuck around and, you know, love Pokemon Go for what it is, can see the positive impact that that’s made in their communities.”
