Niantic launches new paid Pokémon Go Research for daily PokéCoins—and it’s a mess

While players were distracted by a few updates and events, Niantic dropped a new kind of research in the Pokémon Go shop—and no one is happy with the item despite it offering plenty of PokéCoins to players who purchase it.

Niantic’s use of ticked content in Pokémon Go has been a controversial topic growing in frequency this year, though it does bring some decent boosts and deals for players willing to spend a few bucks here and there. The recent addition of a PokéCoin Field Research ticket has brought some additional flak down on paid content, however, as it is only a profitable option for some players and not even implemented properly. 

For $2, or the equivalent price in your local currency, the PokéCoin Field Research ticket in the shop is set to give you 20 PokéCoins each day from May 16 to 30 for completing a Field Research task—totaling 300 PokéCoins by the time it ends. Depending on where you purchase that ticket, you might actually be getting scammed because the Field Research’s cost fluctuates based on your region. 

For example, a player based in Poland said in a Reddit thread discussing the update the ticket costs zł12.00 or $3 while the regular 100 PokéCoin bundle only costs 3zł, or around $0.75. Players from multiple other countries have also noted how they would either be losing money or barely gaining anything from purchasing this ticket. Discounting the fact that, at max, you are likely to get 80 extra PokéCoins if you do your Field Research task every day in the right region, you can easily miss out on a task if you aren’t actively monitoring your progress. 

This Field Research will count as your “daily” spot in the Field Research slot, so players complaining about potentially missing out on a task for not having a free spot among your normal three are slightly overblowing the issue. Despite that, if you already have some form of bonus Field Research that you haven’t completed, or fail to spin a PokéStop on any of the 15 days, you will essentially lose out on the 20 PokéCoins you paid for. “I was very close to hitting purchase since a free dollar sounds nice. I’m fine with putting a bit of money in here and there and extra tasks is nice. But once I read that you need a free slot for it… F that noise,” another player said. 

As a result of this discourse, and the clear scammy nature in certain countries, most players are just telling anyone looking to get more PokéCoins to purchase a normal bundle and skip the tasks altogether since this “deal” is nothing more than a gimmick. 

On top of this messy research, Niantic also launched another broken update and brought back a set of Timed Research from two years ago completely out of the blue.