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Pokemon GO has been in and out of hot waters since their decision to nerf Remote Raid passes. Recently though, players noticed a change in the game that made them believe the company was on a redemption arc. The change had to do with the critter spawn radius around the player model. The radius, generally capped at 40m, was seen to be 80m.
This was a change that had been implemented during the peak COVID-19 pandemic months but was revoked when normalcy was restored. The quality of life improvements due to this change were so good that Pokemon GO players requested Niantic to reinstate the change.
Players were overjoyed when the increased spawn radius suddenly popped on some devices. This joy, however, was short-lived, as Niantic called it the result of a bug, and quickly shipped a patch to remove it from the game.
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In protest of such fickleness on the part of Pokemon GO's developer, players like u/RegularSupermarket3 took to the game's subreddit to share that they would not download the update reverting the spawn radius changes until it was forced.
Check out the current Pokemon GO raid bosses that you can encounter in-game
Pokemon GO players protest the reversion of spawn radius change by refusing to download latest update
Players from the community have been raging about the change to the spawn radius after a couple of days of it being increased. This was one of the few things Niantic did that made the playerbase happy.
Therefore, when the company shipped the new update with "quality of life" changes, it was not just ironic but almost like a punch to the players' faces. It was almost as if any change the community appreciated would be revoked immediately, while the unpopular ones would be forced onto the players, notwithstanding negative feedback.
Like the original poster, other players refused to download the update so that they could reap the benefits of an extended spawn radius for a bit longer. However, this was not allowed, as several players reported that the Pokemon GO app had to be updated to the latest version to be playable.
u/f3ar13 even went on to make a rather crude (but meaningful) comment on the aspects of the quality of life changes.
u/Broken_Bunch took the metaphor even further to create a realistic parallel to how players in the community must be feeling because of these changes.
While a comparison with cancer is obviously hyperbolic in nature, Niantic's policies have indeed played with its larger playerbase's sentiments for a while now.
The conversation thereafter inevitably meandered into Niantic's inefficacy as a company regarding Pokemon GO's development and how the truckloads of revenue they keep generating is solely based on the power of the Pokemon IP.
On one hand, Niantic says it wants to prioritize Pokemon GO, and on the other, it keeps sabotaging solid features like this and alienating its playerbase. It really appears that the company has some soul-searching to do as the game steadily heads toward its seventh anniversary.
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