Ahead of Pokémon Go Battle Week: Timeless Travels (Jan. 19 to 24), Niantic just announced the event’s paid Timed Research will be canceled.
In a Jan. 17 tweet, Niantic Support gave players a heads-up that the Timed Research ticket won’t be appearing in the shop as previously announced for Battle Week alongside Annihilape’s debut. The Raging Battles Timed Research would have included three Rare Candy, one Rocket Radar, Stardust, and two Premium Battle Passes as rewards. The company did not specify the reason why the paid Timed Research was pulled from the event.
While you might expect players to be disappointed about less content for the event, a lot of Pokémon Go fans are far from upset. In fact, are poking fun at Niantic, saying it’s a loss for the company and a win for the players.
To be fair, this would’ve been the ninth paid ticket in Pokémon Go for January, and the month isn’t even over yet. Even Joe Merrick, Serebii’s webmaster, stated that the amount of paid tickets has become “a bit excessive.” He also suggested that Niantic make Timed Research free and leave paid tickets for Special Research, stating it’s “bad practice” to have paid Timed Research. This is because Timed Research has an expiration date, and you could be losing out on rewards if you cannot complete the tasks on time. In other words, even if you pay for Timed Research, you still aren’t guaranteed the rewards.
And aside from this being yet another paid ticket situation, this is far from the only oopsie from Niantic as of late. Just last week, the company addressed an issue where Shiny Tornadus was not appearing in Raids like it was supposed to. As an apology, affected players were given a special bundle in their shop.
Who knows. Niantic might also replace the paid Timed Research with something else as compensation during Battle Week—or they could just reschedule the paid ticket for another time. Either way, fans are very familiar with issues like this. Their celebration of the canceled Timed Research is notable but unsurprising. At a certain point, the events being hit with one bug after another detracts from the fun and excitement that they’re supposed to bring to players. It’s great that Niantic addresses these issues and does its best to compensate everyone, but players are beginning to grow tired.
