Pokémon Go Remote Raid passes are about to change for the worse

The Remote Raid passes in Pokémon Go have been widely received as a positive item by many fans in the community. These were initially introduced in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, and countries worldwide were shutting down communities. Despite the positive reception from the community, developer Niantic has been trying to pull away from these items slowly. A recent text hiccup now shows that Niantic could be implementing a change to limit how many Remote Raid Passes a player uses today, which could severely hurt a good amount of the Pokémon Go community moving forward.

The hiccup occurred earlier today, which was caught and recorded by Joe Merrick, the webmaster for Serebii.net. Merrick posted a screenshot of their in-game Remote Raid Pass ticket. It showed the text describing the item, detailing that it was a “Pass to join a Raid Battle remotely. You can join {0} Raids a day,” confirming that players will likely have a set limit of Remote Raid Pass battles they can join per day, rather than giving them unlimited attempts given how many Remote Raid Passes they have in their inventory.

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Merrick has confirmed that the text has been removed following the screenshot. Still, it leaves a sour taste for any Pokémon Go player who purchases and uses this premium item. COVID-19 restrictions aside, raid battles in Pokémon Go are challenging, on top of players relying on others in their local area to play the game and find these limited-time raids before they expire. The Remote Raid Passes opened up the Pokémon Go mobile game to the community and turned it into a worldwide game rather than one restricted by a player’s local area.

If Niantic goes forward with this change, it may not surprise many Pokémon Go players, given Niantic’s stance on this item and how they view the community. Following the inception of Remote Raid Passes and the COVID-19 restrictions lifted worldwide, Niantic has been slowly trying to peel the Pokémon Go community away from this item with decidedly negative results.

In June 2022, Niantic introduced four-star raids for Community Day events but prevented players from accessing these event raids through Remote Raid Passes. This is on top of already making them more expensive than traditional Raid Passes and restricting them to only being available through PokéCoins, the mobile game’s premium currency.

We don’t know when this change will occur, but we can guess that the immediate community backlash from this announcement will be intense. Given how Niantic has responded to comments regarding shiny rates in larger events, they are decidedly set on how players interact with the game and how they should be playing it, not how they enjoy it.