Does Niantic Hate Pokémon GO Players?

If they don't hate the players, maybe they hate the game.

Someone at Niantic, probably: “Why aren’t people buying these absurdly priced Boxes in the Shop?”

Following Niantic’s announcement of the new season of Pokémon GO—the Season of Shared Skies—avid battler and YouTube content creator DanOttawa took to Twitter/X to vent his frustrations about guaranteed XL Candies from trades not being a bonus. He tweeted the following:

Niantic hates its player base. This is the first time in 11 straight seasons they have decided not to bring guaranteed XL trades back during the season for which this bonus is supposed to be 'on'.

For the uninitiated, XL Candies are what Trainers use to power up their Pokémon past Level 40. Depending on the rarity of the Pokémon, these Candies can be difficult to accrue to the extent needed to level it up. Having guaranteed XL Candies as a reward from trades is thus a valuable bonus for PvP and PvE players alike. In turn, its absence, particularly as a break with tradition, understandably is a disappointment for those with dedicated trade partners. Why disrupt this benefit to players? For that matter, why can’t guaranteed XL Candies from trades be a bonus every season, let alone every other season? Who is being hurt by an XL Candy economy that works better for all players?

I don’t know DanOttawa personally, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who dines on hyperbole. “Hate” is a strong word. Could Niantic really hate its player base? Why would they hate the users responsible for keeping the ship afloat?

For what it’s worth, Mr. Ottawa is not the only Niantic critic to suggest the San Francisco-based game developer has a predilection for punishing its players. A cursory glance at the results of the search “Niantic hates” on the aforementioned Elon Musk money pit turns up a wealth of exasperated messages from PoGO Trainers. To be fair, a good percentage of these are post-event laments about a low-to-nonexistent Shiny count. “Niantic hates me because I didn’t get a Shiny Tapu Bulu.” Right—John Hanke & Co. can’t put together a functioning game, but they can specifically deny you a sparkly version of something. These are the kinds of people who probably believe there is an algorithm which exists to keep certain GO Battle League participants down. It couldn’t be my lack of skill—no, it must be the unseen hand of the Algorithm keeping me from achieving greatness!

Pokémon GO tinfoil hat mishegoss aside, there are more legitimate criticisms of the company’s interaction with the fanbase. After sifting through these tweets/posts, the following is a sampling of the recurring gripes from the ranks of the disenfranchised:

Collection Challenges/other challenges with requirements that favor paying users

It’s OK for something billed as a “challenge” to be a little difficult or require the player to evince some degree of effort to complete it. I think the majority of the PoGO community would agree that success re Collection Challenges and Timed Research rewards shouldn’t be a glorified participation trophy. That said, the ask of the individual should be proportionate to the constraints of the challenge and should take into consideration the restrictions/obstacles many players face. Whether it’s concerns about cost, geographic location, having a work/school schedule, physical limitations, or simply a desire to play the game more casually, tasks which are too exacting risk alienating dedicated Trainers.

As an F2P player who doesn’t live in an urban environment, challenges based on winning a set number of Raids are especially burdensome for me. Not only am I mostly limited to free daily Raid Passes and other complementary Raid Passes given out for Raid Days, having enough Gyms with active Raids or enough help to beat tougher Raid Bosses can be tricky. Niantic’s probable assumption is that, by adding a time component to the mix, this will act as a motivating factor. This also assumes that the rewards themselves are sufficient incentives for striving to achieve the goals set forth by the challenge.

On Niantic’s part, however, this may be an overestimation of one’s level of engagement. A recent season’s Timed Research requirement of winning 60 Raids as part of a host of tasks across different modalities motivated me in the sense that I went out and did Raids in person for the sake of obtaining a Master Ball, but I didn’t enjoy finishing it on its own merits. Many of the Raids were done by myself—all alone—and featured Bosses I had little desire to confront. Not exactly the “community experience” the makers envision.

Other challenges I left only partially completed or not attempted at all. Given less than a week to finish enough Raids to earn an Origin Forme Giratina as part of the Road to Sinnoh: Raid Challenge, I was unable to fulfill this requirement. At least give us full-time workers a weekend to try to achieve this feat, no? As for The Ultra Space Wonders event at the end of last season, I wasn’t about to go out of my way to tackle Bagon, Deino, and Druddigon for the sake of some XP and an extra encounter with Mareanie. At least Druddigon has some appeal as a three-star Raid based on the Raid rewards and since I don’t yet have the Shiny. Bagon and Deino, meanwhile, are fairly abundant by now. If this were Year One or Two of the Pokémon GO experience, I likely would’ve jumped at the chance to tick these boxes off. Now at Year Seven going on Year Eight? The zeal is not quite the same.

Tasks which force the player to spend Stardust to complete

If you’re a Pokémon GO player, alongside “forced update,” few phrases are liable to cause you anxiety the way “Power up a Pokémon X times” does when you see it as part of Special Research.

Aside from maybe Poké Balls, no resource is more valuable to the PoGO Trainer than Stardust, the item used to power up Pokémon and to add a second Charged Attack. The higher the target level of the Pokémon to be leveled up, the more Dust needed. It is therefore recommended that, before you go to spend Stardust, you think seriously about what you want to power up and whether you absolutely need to power it up.

So naturally, Niantic dispenses with that inclination toward Stardust sobriety and makes you spend Stardust merely to advance to the next series of tasks. Welp—so much for your savings.

Your choice as a Trainer is 1) either to power up something you might actually use in battles or Raids in the future, in all likelihood spending more Dust than you otherwise would’ve spent if not for the mandatory requirement, or 2) power up Pokémon you will never use just because they are at a lower level, limiting the overall cost but guaranteeing your expenditure is an empty one. Neither is an attractive proposition.

The saving grace here is that this kind of task is simple to complete, so I’m reticent to dismiss it out of hand, especially for those with mobility issues. Unless that’s a factor, though, you’re not asking to essentially throw Stardust out the window. As time goes on, too, Niantic has seemed only to grow more fetishistic in its devotion to making players cough up Dust for Field Research and Special Research alike. A friend of mine and reader of this blog not long ago threw in the towel on his Pokémon GO playing days, not exclusively because of escalating Stardust prices but definitely citing them as a factor. The pain involved with spending Dust at someone else’s behest may not be physical, but it’s indeed very real.

Nerfing popular QOL changes

I don’t wish to belabor this theme considering I’ve covered it in detail in individual posts—my most recent piece on the death of six-hour Community Days hits a lot of the same notes—but various rollbacks of popular in-game features, esp. those introduced at the height of the pandemic, are confounding to Pokémon GO fans convinced that Niantic loves to garner negative feedback and hates to actually make money. The most controversial of these nerfs undoubtedly is the price hike and daily usage limit imposed on Remote Raid Passes, but it’s seemingly just one in a series of questionable decisions on the company’s part.

One change which saw almost universal approval from PoGO players was an increase in 2023 to the interaction radius for wild Pokémon spawns, a doubling of this radius from 40 meters to 80 meters which brought its upper bounds in line with the interaction radius for Gyms and PokéStops established as a COVID-era bonus. Initial word from Niantic suggested that this was an intended upgrade, and subsequent reporting relied on that intel. However, Niantic Support later clarified in a tweet that this was the unintended byproduct of a bug, and the improvement was ultimately deep-sixed by the company. Needless to say, this didn’t go over well with the community.

The internal confusion within Niantic about whether the spawn interaction radius boost was a purposeful quality of life change and the resulting jumbled communication about the aborted update is unfortunately emblematic of the rocky relationship between the developer and players since PoGO launched. Niantic routinely publishes information about the game online only to have to backtrack or add context when those assertions prove to be inaccurate. Really, the lack of quality control from a customer service/marketing standpoint could and probably should be its own section in this post, but the laundry list of errors feels like it would take its own article to fully enumerate.

“Niantic hates rural/disabled players”

This is another sentiment that could get its own piece written about it. I wanted to highlight the complaints of rural players and/or those with physical disabilities that make being active for long stretches difficult because they are the most pervasive within the “Niantic hates” forum aside from the “I didn’t get X Shiny” pity party subtopic. If you’ve been paying attention to this blog or even this post for any stretch, you probably understand where this is coming from. Not to dwell too heavily on the Remote Raid aspect but raising the prices as a disincentive against “excessive” Raiding from one’s couch is, by its very nature, going to exclude some people, notably those who can’t or don’t want to spend more to get the same experience (not to mention it’s blatantly judgmental). Speaking personally, I don’t live in a city, but I have it better than some—if not most. There are some people who need to drive across town just to reach a PokéStop. An embarrassment of riches, theirs is not.

What compounds these feelings of isolation for Trainers without a robustly active local Pokémon GO community is Niantic’s insistence on local Raids which can only be completed while one is near the Gym hosting the Raid Boss. Elite Raids, as janky as they have proven, don’t allow participation via Remote Raid Pass. Shadow Raids likewise require physical proximity to join. For the lower-difficulty Raid Bosses, soloing isn’t an issue. For five-star and even perhaps three-star Shadow Raids, on the other hand, two or more players are necessary. If you don’t have the manpower, you’re at a loss.

Niantic envisions Elite Raids, Shadow Raids, and other non-Raid developments as suitable replacements for Remote Raids, confident that they can innovative their way out of the PR hole they’ve dug for themselves and knew they were liable to incur by nerfing Remote Raid Passes in the first place. Each time the company fails to execute, however—look no further than the backlash engendered from rolling out an avatar customization update that reportedly embarrassed the testing team who tried it in beta—fresh salt is applied to the wound. I’m not even an avid Raider, and I’m still mad about the decision. For those users who found homes in online Remote Raid communities only to have Niantic take a wrecking ball to them more or less overnight, it’s downright devastating.

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If only everything in Pokémon GO matched the level of dedication of its artists to the loading screens…

These criticisms lobbed at Niantic on social media would indicate why Pokémon GO fans might hate or have serious reservations about the company, but not necessarily whether Niantic hates them or any other player, for that matter. Not offering guaranteed XL Candies for trades when they’re “supposed” to? It seems negligent on Niantic’s part, but not malicious. Aggressively monetizing every in-game event? Standard operating procedure for a lot of video game developers. Forcing players to spend their hard-earned Stardust and real-world money on Remote Raid Passes? More reason to get outside and stay on the grind! Disadvantaging rural and disabled players? Life isn’t fair, Trainers!

It’s been said you can’t truly know what lies in a person’s heart, so I won’t try to speculate whether Niantic, a soulless corporation, truly hates its player base. I don’t doubt that there are employees there who are genuinely committed to making PoGO the best product it can be, themselves probable Pokémon fans having grown up with the franchise. Certainly, the detailed artwork displayed on the game’s loading screens, for one, must’ve been a labor of love. I don’t mean to be snarky when I say there is discernable effort here.

If there is a charge to be levied against Niantic, I think rather that it lies not in intentional animus towards the players, but a level of disinterest in the game itself. As bmenrigh_pogo on Twitter/X mused, “I don’t think they hate players. I think the company hates the game.” As this user reasons, Niantic wants its lasting legacy to be that of an innovator and leader in the augmented reality sphere, but instead, that legacy is tied to an intellectual property belonging to another entity and to a game it has a track record of running incompetently. Who knows—maybe their devotion to their original title, Peridot, will yet bear fruit. That it hasn’t been canceled by now is some measure of success, I suppose. It’s still not as relevant as Pokémon GO is now, however, and definitely not as relevant as it was at peak popularity.

Does Niantic hate its player base? I’ll let you decide. At the end of the day, though, whether they do or don’t is immaterial. What ultimately matters is whether the product delivers. On that note, there’s a lot of room for improvement.