Niantic Responds to Pokemon GO Boycott Threats

Pokemon GO fest may have just ended, but players are up in arms over a recent change by Niantic to the popular mobile augmented reality game. In response to the pandemic, Niantic introduced a change to the game last year where the range to interact with Pokestops was increased from 40 meters to 80. However, this change was recently reverted even amidst rising Delta variant concerns.

Players have not been happy about this decision, rushing to social media with attempts to persuade the company to keep the 80 meter interaction distance with threats of a boycott. In a blog post published Thursday on their official website, Niantic responded to these criticisms.

Niantic Responds to Boycott Threats

In their response, Niantic stated that their decision to reverse this change was based on their mission to encourage people to "connect to real places in the real world, and to visit places that are worth exploring." While a noble mission, they noted that "The health and wellbeing of players is our top priority," and they would be implementing the following actions:

• We are assembling an internal cross-functional team to develop proposals designed to preserve our mission of inspiring people to explore the world together, while also addressing specific concerns that have been raised regarding interaction distance
• We will share the findings of this task force by the next in game season change (September 1)
• As part of this process, we will also be reaching out to community leaders in the coming days to join us in this dialogue