Niantic is making a long-feared change to Pokémon Go’s Remote Raids

After previous data mines and backend slips had fans worried, Niantic has now officially confirmed that changes will be made to limit the functionality of Pokémon Go’s Remote Raids feature. 

In one of the developer’s blog posts, Niantic shared that pricing adjustments, participation limits, and other rebalancing efforts are being implemented on April 6. 

The actual limitations themselves aren’t terrible, but players are now limited to participating in a maximum of five Remote Raids per day in Pokémon Go. Most players likely won’t even reach this limit since you can only carry three Remote Raid Passes at a time, but the main concern is that Niantic is once again changing a feature that allowed more people to play the game in different ways to simply focus on “in person” content. 

For example, players who participate in a raid in-person are now more likely to earn Candy XL after it ends. If it was just a change like this to incentivize players to go out more, the concern levels would be much lower, but it comes at the cost of some functionality for another feature. 

“Since their introduction in 2020, Remote Raid Passes have come to dominate the experience of playing Pokémon Go in a way we never intended,” Niantic said. “Rewarding Trainers with additional Candy XL and adding other new features are two of the ways we hope to further incentivize playing Pokémon GO in person with your friends, family, and community.”

Related: The reaction to Pokemon Go’s Remote Raid changes went about as poorly as expected

Remote Raid Passes are being reworked so that they are included in the rewards for Research Breakthroughs each month, making them slightly easier to obtain. But the price of Remote Raid Passes in the in-game shop is being increased, so this is mostly a net negative for anyone trying to get this type of Raid Pass. 

The one bright spot here is that the limited number of raids might be lifted for specific events, so players who relied on Remote Raids to access some content may still be able to do so. 

As of now, Niantic does not plan to remove Remote Raid Passes entirely, but the developers feel that changes like this to push players back to in-person play are “necessary for the long-term health of the game.”