Angry Pokemon Go Players Are Way Overestimating Their Impact
Angry Pokemon Go Players Are Way Overestimating Their Impact
by Envyforme
47 Comments
IltisSpiderrick
thats actually a tactic used in the game industry. You can make the shittiest of games but you NEVER admit that your game has not reached expectation. As a Gamecompany it is in your best interest to lie to the world that even though players are dissatisfied, your game is still considered successfull. Because if you admit defeat, that spreads faster than wildfire and actually prevents more players to jump on. If only the playerbase is raging and the company claims success, that makes more unrelated people think “well if it is still successfull it can’t be that.” But if you admit defeat than it goes “Wow, even the devs think its bad, better not touch it.”
octocode
> until Niantic came out and said the revenue data was completely inaccurate.
they actually didn’t, they never refuted that the MoM in april was lower (if anything, their statement actually confirmed it). obviously YTD is going to be high, hoenn tour was before the raid pass changes… my guess is we will continue to see revenue decline in the months to come.
it’s pretty obvious from campfire/local groups that interest in the game is at an all-time low, and reddit might not represent the majority of casual players, but it’s a pretty good insight into the serious players who have a much larger LTV
considering how hard other niantic games flop, and their layoffs/cancelled projects, i don’t expect them to understand anything about the mobile game market though
unforgivablecrust
Okay “Eric Switzer” from “The Gamer”, who is definitely not a Niantic employee or Niantic shill.
Outrageous-Step6947
Despite this being bullshit propaganda; they fail to realize a lot of us left not because of the raid changes or pricing. We left because the game is boring and repetitive. A good portion of those who quit were just looking for a time to walk-away. In short: we don’t care.
TheBeefyCow
All my friends are gone. My local community destroyed. This game was meant to be played together and they did just about everything to insure you don’t play together. So naturally, I quit along side all my friends. We didn’t even coordinate a “mass exit”, we just stopped playing after we couldn’t raid together
DifficultTap3947
Lol it’s 100% working. -40% revenue, nothing more than a propaganda piece.
zlohth
You mean a dev who has no idea what revenue is said “I don’t think that’s accurate”
Devs have no idea how much money their game makes. That’s entirely accounting’a job.
Mej6
Did we just get compared to conservative bigots…LOL edit: i don’t lean any particular way just thought it was an odd comparison lol
LordFriezy
I’ve played a lot of mobile games in my time and this game oozes the ‘dying’ feeling. It’s not quite dead, but if it progresses as it has been the game has no future.
Most casual Pokémon players have no interest in generations after gen 4 at the max, the novelty of AR is gone and the ‘hype’ behind Pokémon Go is long dead. It’s normal for hype to die down with mobile games, as the mobile game progresses the vision has to change. More freebies to entice players, more events and attempts at retaining players.
Unfortunately, Niantic are stupid and would rather stick by their guns and kill off another game than realise that the reason this game is popular is because it’s Pokémon. The ‘AR’ component is just a glorified pedometer. So instead of leveraging the Pokémon name and adding features that make sense to players, their doubling down on their location data garbage and sending players away.
gamingred-it
I agree that the impact is being overstimated. But there are people that don’t even know reddit or the boycott but are unhappy with the game too. In my local comunnity players are just demotivated, paying less, not because of any boycott but because of the prices, bugs and the boring state of the game now.
DeuceSevin
>Online communities tend to overestimate how much impact they can have
I see this same thing in the Tesla communities as well. People fanatical about a product think they represent the typical customer.
Almost everyone on this sub thinks they are hurting financially, Niantic denies it. Time will tell.
Swolie7
“Revenue for the year is up”… yeah that’s because EVERYONE was grinding for shadow Beldum, rayquaza and primal evolutions… they would need to roll out some pretty stellar offering to continue being in the black. EVERYONE can tell the game has dropped significantly in regular player use.. most of my friends have stopped playing, not even JUST because of the remote raid pass but everything they’ve been doing over the last year and half or so..
Rasty_lv
So in week or two there will be articles blaming players and attacking fans.. We’ve seen it many times with Disney / marvel.
megalo53
Imagine being as stupid as the guy who wrote this
Loud_Nefariousness48
This article has such a condescending tone to it that really rubs me the wrong way. This person has no more idea than the rest of his but they chose to write this article in such a manner to patronize members of a community.
alaskadotpink
I’m not *not* playing because I’m trying to hurt their bottom line, I’m not playing because they ruined the game for me.
BojangleHeimerShmidt
This whole article reads like a guy taking his opinion on the impact of workers going on strike from a union buster and stating it as an unarguable fact. All without even having any numbers to dispute the data.
Are you really gonna trust the union busters on how the strike is impacting their company?
DecisionTypical
Is this just an article saying boycotting video games doesn’t work without sources or research?
Talk about coming off as a sellout. Even if they’re right, what does this accomplish? Getting players back to playing PoGo for Niantic? Telling players not to try to voice their criticism of bad practices from companies making greedy moves?
Lets_Grow_Liberty
Uh huh. We’ll see how the fiscal quarter ends
Zoiger
Articles like this is just confirmation to double down 10 times harder on boycotting NIANTIC.
Zoiger
The worst part of this, is even if you reverse the changes that lead to the mass exodus. The damage has already been done. And a lot of it is irreparable. You’ve already disrespected and disenfranchised this community, shat on it, spat on it, kicked it in the teeth, insulted it, mocked it, acted childish with this banning memes TOS update. They’ve screwed themselves to a level that even undoing the changes couldn’t fix at this point.
Rasphere
I’m only playing right now to get the vivillion in SV….
chocolatekraken
Lol this is propaganda, sure the game that relies on the players buying shit, Will totally be unaffected if no one plays. Totally makes sense
Rocksteady1013
Is this the same guy thay wrote an article on how shitty the new Zelda commercial is?
ringlord_1
It’s totally not suspicious that a company that is radio silent on everything that happens under their game, suddenly breaks silence to refute some numbers without giving any actual details. Totally normal phenomenon
dcdcdc26
Niantic is way UNDERestimating my spite for their tactics in the last year but especially since the start of 2023. I wouldn’t care if I was the only player to boycott on the planet, that doesn’t change my feelings for how the game has plummeted.
TmCLiquid
Here’s how I’ve been thinking about it. I know that they have lost around $20-$40 a week in purchases from me since Lugia was in raids, and that was a personal choice because I wasn’t aware of the whole boycott until fairly recently. For about a month now I maybe put in 5 minutes every other day. I was a very heavy player and loved the game, and I know that I was still not one of the REALLY hardcore players that I’ve met through my time playing this game.
Seeing how many players this affected, I can only imagine the financial hit Niantic has taken. Friends who used to send gifts daily are now a ghost, and will continue to be until Niantic listens to its player base. A developer that doesn’t listen to its community is bound to fail. Look at Old School RuneScape, a game that’s had a player base since 2007 and continues to hold 100% stronger than Niantics ever will because of the decisions they continue to make. For example the team at Jagex for OSRS hosts monthly polls to their players in game to get feedback, the moderators of the game are interactive on social media with their players, changes to the game don’t get implemented unless they pass in a poll(for the most part). These are small things that Niantic is more than capable of doing, but instead they continue to make the decision to make a quick dollar, rather than looking at the longevity of what could have been one of mobile apps greatest games.
SrJRDZ
Nah, in my local group (300 ppl) no one goes on raid now since the remote raid pass debacle, worse even than pre covid PKMN. So no minority.
Boycott Niantic.
sedativedance
The guy really just said that there’s a silent majority that supports Niantic… Nixon must be back in power
LankyEmergency7992
TL;DR: the remote pass change is the last straw that gave me a reason to quit a game that has been getting stale and more of a money grab for the past year, and I found out that life is more enjoyable post-PoGo.
The game has getting boring for the past year now, with mediocre community days and events, buggy app updates, and removal of features that made events and the game in general fun. Seasons ruined the variety of spawns we used to get, and legendaries are locked behind raids, with reduced chances of them from GBL and removal from research breakthroughs. The game lost the “magic” it had in 2016 and during the lockdowns. I kept playing though since I didn’t know what else to turn to, and I didn’t have a reason to stop.
The remote pass change was more of a last straw for me, it gave me a reason to break away from my habit of playing the game daily and spending $1,000+ on coins each year, in hopes of playing a tiny part in getting Niantic to improve the game we all enjoy. Doubling pass prices and limiting them to 5/day is serious enough as it affects both game inclusivity and the global community enough that I could no longer support PoGo by giving them money or my location data, so I decided to uninstall the app for a week to show my displeasure with the change.
After the first couple days I stopped feeling the need to play as much. I then decided to come back if and only if Niantic came to their senses and reverted the changes after the whole “strike” movement. Lately, I realized that this likely won’t happen at all, and I made peace with the fact that I probably won’t come back to the game anymore.
Not playing has actually been great. I can actually go places without having to bring a battery pack or my Go+, two less things to charge and pack when going anywhere. I can be more present when I go anywhere also. I finally had time to start that YouTube channel I have been wanting to start since 2021. I picked up my Switch again after having not touched it since quarantine, and even finished Breath of the Wild and working through Sonic Frontiers and Pokémon Violet. I can spend what I spent on Pokecoins on more enjoyable experiences. I have my first PoGo-free vacation coming up since the game came out and the thought of enjoying the surroundings and activities for the first time instead of focusing on the game has me extremely excited.
If they did revert the pass changes, I still probably won’t come back. Boycotting PoGo was probably what I needed to break my addiction I had to this now boring cash-grab game.
NumeralJoker
The people writing this aren’t actively researching the communities or actually reading much social media on this game.
There is a marked shift in tone that has not been seen before and a noticable decline in activity in just about every metric we are able to track. The rest of the stuff we can’t is hidden by design exactly so a trash article like this can be pumped out to pretend it doesn’t matter.
Maybe the game will be “fine”, but it won’t be the same going forward. The quality of the experience and the community that drove it has taken a major hit, and the game’s prices are simply too expensive to be accessible for many people now. Whatever form the game survives in is less enjoyable now than it was both during the quality peak of 2021 and the more active hardcore player era of 2018-2019.
Silverneelse
I just read it. The amount of statements that are never explained or backed up is astounding. I’m on the fence if OP shouldve brought it to our attention to read. It doesnt deserve the attention at all as it seems to been have written by an hermit. This piece of shit shouldve been left in the gutter, then again it does paint a rather grim picture and stirs the question what motivates big companies to lie like this?
kagibso
There’s a bunch of comments already so I’m sure this will get lost in the shuffle. But I felt like I had to chime in. I was a competitive debate coach for 12 years and coached two national championships. This article reminds me a core concept in speech and rhetoric: framing. There are two ways to write this article (more than that, obviously, but bear with me) – that Pokemon Go players have no power over a multi-billion dollar juggernaut, or that a company that was valued at $9,000,000,000 a mere two years ago is flaunting its power over a captive user base.
I don’t understand the utility of writing the former. What use is it, journalistically or practically, to say that people using disparate networks of community in the only ways they know how to, is useless, other than corporate bootlicking. Why is this article not framed as “a CEO worth $20 million dollars and a team of C-suite executives gave a moveset update for season 11 that was a majority Boomburst in spite of a burgeoning PVP community. They phased out two leagues that were accessible for new players and failed to implement tournaments, new formats (pick-6), or innovate on that format. After that, they nerfed catch rates at their signature event and then brazenly told people to stay out of a public park. They increased prices on the most popular development twice without making meaningful improvements to gameplay for those events, and shockingly failed to schedule the promised, timely make-up event for those failures. They promised transparency, blogs, and developer notes and followed through on a mere fraction of those.”
I don’t know. This just rubs me the wrong way. Why would you talk down to people who are committed and passionate about something rather than criticize a company that time and time again has stumbled and continually fails to make those same people stakeholders in developing something sustainable and lasting?
dontcallmeatallpls
The fact this article even exists proves that we are, in fact, underestimating our impact.
MartyVendetta27
Meh, propaganda means nothing to me.
Anecdotally speaking, I was the last person left in my peer group that was still playing and paying. I haven’t given them a dime since they experimented with individualized pricing schemes based on metadata like phone brand and model, etc.
MonolithyK
Not gonna lie, it was best just to let this article starve in obscurity. It lacks the substance to warrant the free clicks it’s getting. Even though I personally have a bias against Niantic, I would at least be willing to see reason if the opposition could provide even the slightest backing to their claims.
The best kind of “evidence” this article provided (besides referencing Niantic’s own vague, corporate spokesperson deflections) is some strawman about a failed Bud Light boycott somehow discrediting the efforts of similar movements in the modern era. This whole article exists only to echo Niantic’s panicked response to media backlash.
“Nope, we see nothing” A panicled Niantic spokesperson chirped.
“SEE!?!?! There was *no* impact!” Says the parrot writing this article.
I’m not sure which Niantic employee drives this writer’s kid to violin practice or whatever, but clearly he owes them a favor. It’s hard to find pieces that are so brazenly ignorant of the facts — pushing aside all journalistic integrity with reckless abandon to support a situation they seem to know little about.
When touching on the subject of the community’s very real and very warranted doubt over Naintic’s claims, this brilliant author decides to say:
>”We don’t know actual revenue figures for Pokemon Go, and Niantic isn’t under any obligation to tell us. A lot of people are doubting Niantic’s claim here. It could be a lie, but I don’t think so.”
Eyebrow raising stuff to say the least. Answering basically anything with “because I don’t think so” passes as factual journalism these days?
There’s also a strange anecdote in here about their publication’s own participation in the Hogwarts Legacy boycott, but then backpedaled by saying boycotts doesn’t tend to gain traction. “It hurt itself in confusion”.
What a baffling read.
purr_vessel
I’m over the game entirely. Even before the changes, the whole xl candy system was ridiculous.
Spending 50-70 dollars to max out a legendary and probably even more to get iv’s worth maxing. Insanity.
Not to mention the boring repetitive slog to even complete all of the necessary raids, then the boring catching sequence. And let’s not forget that catching the Pokémon is just a bonus, the items are the real prizes. lmao
After some time away, it’s hard to believe that I wanted so desperately for things to go back to the way they were.
Just for clarification, I still hate the remote changes, but the old system was pretty flawed as well.
YUNoSignin
This is BS. If no-one spends money in their game, they won’t be earning. Keep holding on, boys and girls! Keep strong! Hit them where it hurts.
NinjaMuffinLive
I uninstalled yesterday, enough of this trash. Been enjoying Pokemon Infinite Fusion lately
bigpapisosa
I’m probably the exception here, but since the elite raids and the price change in remote passes, I’ve met quite a few people in my community that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I’m new to my city, and it’s been tough to make friends, but Niantic’s changes helped push me outside my comfort zone and meet people with common interests.
noealz
“Hey yall, this is niantic, what yall do doesnt matter so just hurry up and start buying our products again”
Intelligent_Blackout
I used to spend over 1K a year. That’s over.
ugypants
My Pokémon are staying multiple days in gyms that used to go back and forth all day long. I live in a major US City. Bullshit.
Darkcharade
Something else I think this article missed is that I’m not boycotting the game just like I’m not boycotting destiny or gta online. I’m just no longer a consumer for the product. While there isn’t much of a practical difference I’m not expecting Niantic to change their ways. I’m just not giving them any more money.
I’m surprised no one mentioned it but a good point to this is actually Harry Potter. The article talks about the boycott not working for the new game but what about Niantics old Harry potter game? It wasn’t “boycotted” that I know of. It just wasn’t a good product and people stopped buying into it so it got shut down.
QuarantineV1
I don’t really care about the current overall impact. I’m not reinstalling it until they reverse the raid changes. If that means I never play again, so be it; not the first mobile game I’ve permanently quit because the developer hates its players. Even though I have only done more than 5 remotes in a day once, I just want the option back.
Own-Sky-3748
I’m continuing the boycott for however long it takes. I’m sitting on over 10K Poke coins and won’t use even one of them. Niantic is not getting a dime out of me again until they reverse their bone-headed decisions that are also inconsiderate, if not hostile, to players who are not able-bodied.
Vierailija_Maasta
Did not stop playing since pgo acts as motivation to jog and walk more. But I stopped spending. I thought “hey i dont have to catch them all, i just catch something random”. Actually having more fun since.
47 Comments
thats actually a tactic used in the game industry. You can make the shittiest of games but you NEVER admit that your game has not reached expectation. As a Gamecompany it is in your best interest to lie to the world that even though players are dissatisfied, your game is still considered successfull. Because if you admit defeat, that spreads faster than wildfire and actually prevents more players to jump on. If only the playerbase is raging and the company claims success, that makes more unrelated people think “well if it is still successfull it can’t be that.” But if you admit defeat than it goes “Wow, even the devs think its bad, better not touch it.”
> until Niantic came out and said the revenue data was completely inaccurate.
they actually didn’t, they never refuted that the MoM in april was lower (if anything, their statement actually confirmed it). obviously YTD is going to be high, hoenn tour was before the raid pass changes… my guess is we will continue to see revenue decline in the months to come.
it’s pretty obvious from campfire/local groups that interest in the game is at an all-time low, and reddit might not represent the majority of casual players, but it’s a pretty good insight into the serious players who have a much larger LTV
considering how hard other niantic games flop, and their layoffs/cancelled projects, i don’t expect them to understand anything about the mobile game market though
Okay “Eric Switzer” from “The Gamer”, who is definitely not a Niantic employee or Niantic shill.
Despite this being bullshit propaganda; they fail to realize a lot of us left not because of the raid changes or pricing. We left because the game is boring and repetitive. A good portion of those who quit were just looking for a time to walk-away. In short: we don’t care.
All my friends are gone. My local community destroyed. This game was meant to be played together and they did just about everything to insure you don’t play together. So naturally, I quit along side all my friends. We didn’t even coordinate a “mass exit”, we just stopped playing after we couldn’t raid together
Lol it’s 100% working. -40% revenue, nothing more than a propaganda piece.
You mean a dev who has no idea what revenue is said “I don’t think that’s accurate”
Devs have no idea how much money their game makes. That’s entirely accounting’a job.
Did we just get compared to conservative bigots…LOL edit: i don’t lean any particular way just thought it was an odd comparison lol
I’ve played a lot of mobile games in my time and this game oozes the ‘dying’ feeling. It’s not quite dead, but if it progresses as it has been the game has no future.
Most casual Pokémon players have no interest in generations after gen 4 at the max, the novelty of AR is gone and the ‘hype’ behind Pokémon Go is long dead. It’s normal for hype to die down with mobile games, as the mobile game progresses the vision has to change. More freebies to entice players, more events and attempts at retaining players.
Unfortunately, Niantic are stupid and would rather stick by their guns and kill off another game than realise that the reason this game is popular is because it’s Pokémon. The ‘AR’ component is just a glorified pedometer. So instead of leveraging the Pokémon name and adding features that make sense to players, their doubling down on their location data garbage and sending players away.
I agree that the impact is being overstimated. But there are people that don’t even know reddit or the boycott but are unhappy with the game too. In my local comunnity players are just demotivated, paying less, not because of any boycott but because of the prices, bugs and the boring state of the game now.
>Online communities tend to overestimate how much impact they can have
I see this same thing in the Tesla communities as well. People fanatical about a product think they represent the typical customer.
Almost everyone on this sub thinks they are hurting financially, Niantic denies it. Time will tell.
“Revenue for the year is up”… yeah that’s because EVERYONE was grinding for shadow Beldum, rayquaza and primal evolutions… they would need to roll out some pretty stellar offering to continue being in the black. EVERYONE can tell the game has dropped significantly in regular player use.. most of my friends have stopped playing, not even JUST because of the remote raid pass but everything they’ve been doing over the last year and half or so..
So in week or two there will be articles blaming players and attacking fans.. We’ve seen it many times with Disney / marvel.
Imagine being as stupid as the guy who wrote this
This article has such a condescending tone to it that really rubs me the wrong way. This person has no more idea than the rest of his but they chose to write this article in such a manner to patronize members of a community.
I’m not *not* playing because I’m trying to hurt their bottom line, I’m not playing because they ruined the game for me.
This whole article reads like a guy taking his opinion on the impact of workers going on strike from a union buster and stating it as an unarguable fact. All without even having any numbers to dispute the data.
Are you really gonna trust the union busters on how the strike is impacting their company?
Is this just an article saying boycotting video games doesn’t work without sources or research?
Talk about coming off as a sellout. Even if they’re right, what does this accomplish? Getting players back to playing PoGo for Niantic? Telling players not to try to voice their criticism of bad practices from companies making greedy moves?
Uh huh. We’ll see how the fiscal quarter ends
Articles like this is just confirmation to double down 10 times harder on boycotting NIANTIC.
The worst part of this, is even if you reverse the changes that lead to the mass exodus. The damage has already been done. And a lot of it is irreparable. You’ve already disrespected and disenfranchised this community, shat on it, spat on it, kicked it in the teeth, insulted it, mocked it, acted childish with this banning memes TOS update. They’ve screwed themselves to a level that even undoing the changes couldn’t fix at this point.
I’m only playing right now to get the vivillion in SV….
Lol this is propaganda, sure the game that relies on the players buying shit, Will totally be unaffected if no one plays. Totally makes sense
Is this the same guy thay wrote an article on how shitty the new Zelda commercial is?
It’s totally not suspicious that a company that is radio silent on everything that happens under their game, suddenly breaks silence to refute some numbers without giving any actual details. Totally normal phenomenon
Niantic is way UNDERestimating my spite for their tactics in the last year but especially since the start of 2023. I wouldn’t care if I was the only player to boycott on the planet, that doesn’t change my feelings for how the game has plummeted.
Here’s how I’ve been thinking about it. I know that they have lost around $20-$40 a week in purchases from me since Lugia was in raids, and that was a personal choice because I wasn’t aware of the whole boycott until fairly recently. For about a month now I maybe put in 5 minutes every other day. I was a very heavy player and loved the game, and I know that I was still not one of the REALLY hardcore players that I’ve met through my time playing this game.
Seeing how many players this affected, I can only imagine the financial hit Niantic has taken. Friends who used to send gifts daily are now a ghost, and will continue to be until Niantic listens to its player base. A developer that doesn’t listen to its community is bound to fail. Look at Old School RuneScape, a game that’s had a player base since 2007 and continues to hold 100% stronger than Niantics ever will because of the decisions they continue to make. For example the team at Jagex for OSRS hosts monthly polls to their players in game to get feedback, the moderators of the game are interactive on social media with their players, changes to the game don’t get implemented unless they pass in a poll(for the most part). These are small things that Niantic is more than capable of doing, but instead they continue to make the decision to make a quick dollar, rather than looking at the longevity of what could have been one of mobile apps greatest games.
Nah, in my local group (300 ppl) no one goes on raid now since the remote raid pass debacle, worse even than pre covid PKMN. So no minority.
Boycott Niantic.
The guy really just said that there’s a silent majority that supports Niantic… Nixon must be back in power
TL;DR: the remote pass change is the last straw that gave me a reason to quit a game that has been getting stale and more of a money grab for the past year, and I found out that life is more enjoyable post-PoGo.
The game has getting boring for the past year now, with mediocre community days and events, buggy app updates, and removal of features that made events and the game in general fun. Seasons ruined the variety of spawns we used to get, and legendaries are locked behind raids, with reduced chances of them from GBL and removal from research breakthroughs. The game lost the “magic” it had in 2016 and during the lockdowns. I kept playing though since I didn’t know what else to turn to, and I didn’t have a reason to stop.
The remote pass change was more of a last straw for me, it gave me a reason to break away from my habit of playing the game daily and spending $1,000+ on coins each year, in hopes of playing a tiny part in getting Niantic to improve the game we all enjoy. Doubling pass prices and limiting them to 5/day is serious enough as it affects both game inclusivity and the global community enough that I could no longer support PoGo by giving them money or my location data, so I decided to uninstall the app for a week to show my displeasure with the change.
After the first couple days I stopped feeling the need to play as much. I then decided to come back if and only if Niantic came to their senses and reverted the changes after the whole “strike” movement. Lately, I realized that this likely won’t happen at all, and I made peace with the fact that I probably won’t come back to the game anymore.
Not playing has actually been great. I can actually go places without having to bring a battery pack or my Go+, two less things to charge and pack when going anywhere. I can be more present when I go anywhere also. I finally had time to start that YouTube channel I have been wanting to start since 2021. I picked up my Switch again after having not touched it since quarantine, and even finished Breath of the Wild and working through Sonic Frontiers and Pokémon Violet. I can spend what I spent on Pokecoins on more enjoyable experiences. I have my first PoGo-free vacation coming up since the game came out and the thought of enjoying the surroundings and activities for the first time instead of focusing on the game has me extremely excited.
If they did revert the pass changes, I still probably won’t come back. Boycotting PoGo was probably what I needed to break my addiction I had to this now boring cash-grab game.
The people writing this aren’t actively researching the communities or actually reading much social media on this game.
There is a marked shift in tone that has not been seen before and a noticable decline in activity in just about every metric we are able to track. The rest of the stuff we can’t is hidden by design exactly so a trash article like this can be pumped out to pretend it doesn’t matter.
Maybe the game will be “fine”, but it won’t be the same going forward. The quality of the experience and the community that drove it has taken a major hit, and the game’s prices are simply too expensive to be accessible for many people now. Whatever form the game survives in is less enjoyable now than it was both during the quality peak of 2021 and the more active hardcore player era of 2018-2019.
I just read it. The amount of statements that are never explained or backed up is astounding. I’m on the fence if OP shouldve brought it to our attention to read. It doesnt deserve the attention at all as it seems to been have written by an hermit. This piece of shit shouldve been left in the gutter, then again it does paint a rather grim picture and stirs the question what motivates big companies to lie like this?
There’s a bunch of comments already so I’m sure this will get lost in the shuffle. But I felt like I had to chime in. I was a competitive debate coach for 12 years and coached two national championships. This article reminds me a core concept in speech and rhetoric: framing. There are two ways to write this article (more than that, obviously, but bear with me) – that Pokemon Go players have no power over a multi-billion dollar juggernaut, or that a company that was valued at $9,000,000,000 a mere two years ago is flaunting its power over a captive user base.
I don’t understand the utility of writing the former. What use is it, journalistically or practically, to say that people using disparate networks of community in the only ways they know how to, is useless, other than corporate bootlicking. Why is this article not framed as “a CEO worth $20 million dollars and a team of C-suite executives gave a moveset update for season 11 that was a majority Boomburst in spite of a burgeoning PVP community. They phased out two leagues that were accessible for new players and failed to implement tournaments, new formats (pick-6), or innovate on that format. After that, they nerfed catch rates at their signature event and then brazenly told people to stay out of a public park. They increased prices on the most popular development twice without making meaningful improvements to gameplay for those events, and shockingly failed to schedule the promised, timely make-up event for those failures. They promised transparency, blogs, and developer notes and followed through on a mere fraction of those.”
I don’t know. This just rubs me the wrong way. Why would you talk down to people who are committed and passionate about something rather than criticize a company that time and time again has stumbled and continually fails to make those same people stakeholders in developing something sustainable and lasting?
The fact this article even exists proves that we are, in fact, underestimating our impact.
Meh, propaganda means nothing to me.
Anecdotally speaking, I was the last person left in my peer group that was still playing and paying. I haven’t given them a dime since they experimented with individualized pricing schemes based on metadata like phone brand and model, etc.
Not gonna lie, it was best just to let this article starve in obscurity. It lacks the substance to warrant the free clicks it’s getting. Even though I personally have a bias against Niantic, I would at least be willing to see reason if the opposition could provide even the slightest backing to their claims.
The best kind of “evidence” this article provided (besides referencing Niantic’s own vague, corporate spokesperson deflections) is some strawman about a failed Bud Light boycott somehow discrediting the efforts of similar movements in the modern era. This whole article exists only to echo Niantic’s panicked response to media backlash.
“Nope, we see nothing” A panicled Niantic spokesperson chirped.
“SEE!?!?! There was *no* impact!” Says the parrot writing this article.
I’m not sure which Niantic employee drives this writer’s kid to violin practice or whatever, but clearly he owes them a favor. It’s hard to find pieces that are so brazenly ignorant of the facts — pushing aside all journalistic integrity with reckless abandon to support a situation they seem to know little about.
When touching on the subject of the community’s very real and very warranted doubt over Naintic’s claims, this brilliant author decides to say:
>”We don’t know actual revenue figures for Pokemon Go, and Niantic isn’t under any obligation to tell us. A lot of people are doubting Niantic’s claim here. It could be a lie, but I don’t think so.”
Eyebrow raising stuff to say the least. Answering basically anything with “because I don’t think so” passes as factual journalism these days?
There’s also a strange anecdote in here about their publication’s own participation in the Hogwarts Legacy boycott, but then backpedaled by saying boycotts doesn’t tend to gain traction. “It hurt itself in confusion”.
What a baffling read.
I’m over the game entirely. Even before the changes, the whole xl candy system was ridiculous.
Spending 50-70 dollars to max out a legendary and probably even more to get iv’s worth maxing. Insanity.
Not to mention the boring repetitive slog to even complete all of the necessary raids, then the boring catching sequence. And let’s not forget that catching the Pokémon is just a bonus, the items are the real prizes. lmao
After some time away, it’s hard to believe that I wanted so desperately for things to go back to the way they were.
Just for clarification, I still hate the remote changes, but the old system was pretty flawed as well.
This is BS. If no-one spends money in their game, they won’t be earning. Keep holding on, boys and girls! Keep strong! Hit them where it hurts.
I uninstalled yesterday, enough of this trash. Been enjoying Pokemon Infinite Fusion lately
I’m probably the exception here, but since the elite raids and the price change in remote passes, I’ve met quite a few people in my community that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I’m new to my city, and it’s been tough to make friends, but Niantic’s changes helped push me outside my comfort zone and meet people with common interests.
“Hey yall, this is niantic, what yall do doesnt matter so just hurry up and start buying our products again”
I used to spend over 1K a year. That’s over.
My Pokémon are staying multiple days in gyms that used to go back and forth all day long. I live in a major US City. Bullshit.
Something else I think this article missed is that I’m not boycotting the game just like I’m not boycotting destiny or gta online. I’m just no longer a consumer for the product. While there isn’t much of a practical difference I’m not expecting Niantic to change their ways. I’m just not giving them any more money.
I’m surprised no one mentioned it but a good point to this is actually Harry Potter. The article talks about the boycott not working for the new game but what about Niantics old Harry potter game? It wasn’t “boycotted” that I know of. It just wasn’t a good product and people stopped buying into it so it got shut down.
I don’t really care about the current overall impact. I’m not reinstalling it until they reverse the raid changes. If that means I never play again, so be it; not the first mobile game I’ve permanently quit because the developer hates its players. Even though I have only done more than 5 remotes in a day once, I just want the option back.
I’m continuing the boycott for however long it takes. I’m sitting on over 10K Poke coins and won’t use even one of them. Niantic is not getting a dime out of me again until they reverse their bone-headed decisions that are also inconsiderate, if not hostile, to players who are not able-bodied.
Did not stop playing since pgo acts as motivation to jog and walk more. But I stopped spending. I thought “hey i dont have to catch them all, i just catch something random”. Actually having more fun since.