Lacking Halloween bonuses have Pokémon Go players questioning Niantic’s event ‘scams’

If you participated in Pokémon Go’s hyped Halloween event on Oct. 31 with hopes of collecting a bunch of Rare Candy but returned with empty hands, you’re not the only one whom Niantic disappointed—yet again.

The Pokémon Go subreddit (TheSilphRoad) is filled with posts about the recent Halloween event being a hoax. Well, it wasn’t exactly fake since Niantic did give out Rare Candy for catching costumed Pokémon during the event. The catch was that the event began on Oct. 31 at 10am and ended at 7pm, while players were expecting it to be active from 12am.

Niantic didn’t announce the event’s timings. Many players went out at midnight with hopes of farming Rare Candy and Rare Candy XL, and despite catching several costumed Pokémon, didn’t earn any Rare Candies. Naturally, players were convinced Niantic had forgotten to turn the event on.

It was only when Niantic replied to a tweet that players realized the event was supposed to begin at 10am.

I can only feel for those who spent hours in the night and early morning grinding Pokémon Go for costumed Pokémon only to receive nothing spectacular in return. To top it off, the drop rate of Rare Candy was next to nothing even when the event went live. Players reported having caught over 300 Pokémon and receiving no Candy for it.

One player summarized the entire situation in pointers, and it can’t get any more apt than this. The biggest issue with such events has to be the low drop rates for rewards; we could still ignore the timing issues. How can Niantic deem it fair to reward players with just one Rare Candy for catching 400+ costumed Pokémons?

Besides the outrageously low Rare Candy drop rate and the event timing mess up, many players highlighted how Niantic chose between 10am and 7pm for a Halloween event when most of us are either in school or at work. Plus, I don’t understand how a Halloween event ends at 7pm either.

Niantic has almost never been able to satisfy players with its drop rate-enhancing events in Pokémon Go, which are far more challenging than rewarding. For most of us, it was yet another Go event that dropped nothing for hours of grind. It was just a regular day for Pokémon lovers on mobile.