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Shiny Mew being made available as part of ticketed research in Pokémon Go.
Image via Niantic

Pokémon Go fans agree Shiny Mew Masterwork Research is a middle finger to rural communities

Will the developers address the criticism?

Pokémon Go players are displeased with the newest Shiny Mew Masterwork Research and believe it’s a middle finger toward rural communities.

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The newest challenge allows players to spend $5 on a pass and work towards getting a shiny Mew, however doing so requires completing some region-locked tasks. As a result, the Pokémon Go community is outraged with the whole idea of Shiny Mew Masterwork Research and has expressed its rage on Reddit on July 9.

One player even went as far as to say the rural communities “get consistently fucked over and are basically forced to play with an artificial handicap.” They added that players who aren’t living in metropolitan cities, which is often not their choice, have no way of completing the Shiny Mew Masterwork Research, which ruins the experience for them.

Many players agreed with the sentiment, claiming it is indeed a pain in the neck to try to enjoy Pokémon Go at times. “As a rural player who doesn’t have a poke stop or gym for around 20 miles, it is a big pain for us to play the game especially when we’re low on items.”

The newest Shiny Mew Masterwork Research event was released in Pokémon Go on July 6, and it almost immediately received backlash from the community. One of the challenges, for example, is to catch all 151 Kanto region Pokémon, though some of them are region-locked. As a result, many players labeled it as almost-impossible to finish and continued to criticize Niantic for their decisions.

Related: Pokémon Go developer Niantic slammed with ‘sexual bias’ lawsuit after mass layoffs

At the same time, some players came out with small and temporary solutions to the Shiny Mew Masterwork Research. “It would be nice if the Platinum Kanto requirement was on the last page of the research instead of the first. That way people could at least grind the other tasks first and have something to do while they wait around for their next chance to catch Kangaskhan/Tauros/Mr. Mime,” one of them suggested.


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Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.