What remains to be seen is if any of this will be acknowledged by Niantic, or if the community will have to make some hard decisions about whether they will (or even can) play the game in this form.

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“The game is going to feel very empty moving forward, a lot of people I play with have already uninstalled the game with the announcement of the changes,” Chamblee says. “I get the feeling a lot more people are going to be doing the same, creating a void where a sense of community once was.”

Whatever happens now, it’s clear disabled players are feeling this especially hard as Niantic continues to push them out.

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“I feel like this will further divide the community between able-bodied players and disabled players,” Rongen says. “The changes will make it very difficult for those who want to include and be included to connect to each other when their level of access is not equal.”

General public outcry is one thing, but many companies only speak the language of money, so Rongen hopes the boycotts or player drop-off might speak volumes that social media campaigns can’t.

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“I hope it will hurt the revenue in a way that Niantic will realize this hasn’t been the best strategy for their players and them,” Rongen says. “If that doesn’t happen, I expect the game will slowly lose a part of the player base that is already way too used to being excluded.”

Whatever math Niantic has done to justify these changes, they have, ironically enough, made some players less likely to keep spending money on the game, money they started spending because of Remote Raids in the first place. Jeb Biggart, who does social media for Kotaku and other G/O sites, started playing Pokémon Go more frequently because the mechanic allowed him to play with his friends in Connecticut.

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“If I’m being totally honest, it made me spend more money,” Biggart says. “Since raids were so much more accessible, it meant that I was using passes very frequently. The more remote raids I participated in, the more money I was inevitably spending to get more passes. Before that, I was rarely spending money on Pokémon Go. [...] I don’t see myself spending more money just so I can continue to enjoy a feature that should just become a free option.”

A group of trainers and Pokemon are seen walking down a road covered in PokeStops.
Image: The Pokémon Company
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As far as what Niantic is saying publicly, Pokémon Go VP Ed Wu told Polygon that the original price of Remote Raid Passes was “distorting” the game’s economy and had “become a shortcut to playing the game.” When pressed on this, Wu said the social experience of playing the game in person is key to its market relevance, and that these changes were meant to keep that part of the game alive after so many players had opted to engage in raids remotely.

“Like any other game, we have to think carefully about what are the most epic adventures that you’re having with the game, and that the value is just as much from the journey as it is from the ultimate experience, which is Raids,” Wu says. “So much of the value that folks get out of Pokémon Go is actually that social interaction — the walking, the exercise, the exploration that they do together. By allowing the shortcut to that [with] a premium raid pass, we’re actually taking away much of the value that is unique to our product and differentiates it from pretty much every other thing out there.”

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Meanwhile, fans have a theory that Niantic wants people playing the game in person so that the company can collect and sell map data, and that these efforts have been complicated since 2020 because people can play Pokémon Go without having to leave their couches.

“I’d have way more respect for Niantic if they didn’t lie to us about the reasons,” Finneman says. “Just say you want more GPS data to sell and because of remote raid passes that’s been curtailed a bit.”

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We’ve reached out to Niantic for this story and will update it should we hear back.

Pokémon Go has persisted for seven years at this point, and even if it’s not quite the worldwide phenomenon it was in 2016, Niantic is still supporting it with frequent updates and events. But eventually, even the rosiest of rose-colored glasses have to come off and remind us that, as much as Pokémon Go has helped cultivate community and a resurgence of affection for all 1000 of the titular Pocket Monsters, it is still a product. If it’s not doing what its creators want it to do, they may well undermine what made it so beloved to so many in the first place. Remote Raids may have been introduced as a temporary workaround, but they opened up aspects of Pokémon Go to people who had long felt excluded from the cultural zeitgeist. If Niantic chooses not to listen to their pleas but does keep able-bodied city dwellers playing and spending money, the game will likely survive this hit. But the community surrounding it won’t be the same.

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Update 4/10/23 11:22 Eastern Time: Added information about the status of increased interaction distance after 2021 boycotts.