Although the COVID-19 pandemic has kept Pokémon Go fans at home, it hasn’t stopped players from partaking in the game’s newly released remote raid feature. A month after the feature was added to the game, fans have completed more than 30 million remote raids.
Even though the feature was only implemented as a way to help players to continue playing from home during the ongoing global health crisis, it has opened up a new path for Niantic to pursue when developing for raids.
During that month, more than 70 percent of those remote raids had at least one person participating in them from the actual raid location. That is great news for the developers who slowly want to push players back into competing in raids in-person rather than online.
Until COVID-19 is under control, players will be able to participate in remote raids and remain on equal footing with the players who are physically at the raid location, although that is going to change eventually. Once the pandemic has settled down, players battling in-person will have an edge as Niantic will be decreasing the base attack power of remote battlers, along with other handicaps.
There will also be a limit to how many remote raid pass players can join each raid, but that isn’t going to be added until the other limitations are put on the feature in the future.
The pivot Niantic made to completely support playing from home and social distancing has given new life to Pokémon Go, in that more players are picking up the game again, even if it is just to toss a few Poké Balls to pass the time. If the developers can continue improving the game and innovating like they have been over the last three months, the future is bright for the nearly four-year-old app.
