Despite Assurances From The Devs, Pokemon Unite License Inflation Is Still A Problem

thegamer.com:

It’s getting more and more expensive each passing month to be a Pokemon Unite player. Though we were told it wouldn’t necessarily be the case, the last three Unite Licenses each cost 14,000 coins, up from 12,000 for the previous two, which was up from the 10,000 standard set late last year. Despite assurances from the devs, prices have continued to climb, and there’s nothing to suggest they won’t continue to climb further.

To make matters worse, the last two Pokemon could only be obtained with premium currency for the first week after launch. While we’ve seen new releases locked behind quests and time gates in the past, Dodrio was the first Unite license that could only be purchased with gems. Scizor worked the same way, and as far as we know all Unite Licenses will have this early access model from now on.

Related: Pokemon Unite Stole The Show At The Pokemon World Championship

The only reason it hasn’t turned into a full blown crisis is because neither Dodrio nor Scizor are particularly overpowered. Often when new Pokemon are released, they come out in such a broken state that any team not running it would be at a disadvantage. That hasn’t been the case with the last two, but as soon as a Tyranitar or Dragonite level Pokemon comes out, the pay-to-win alarms are going to start firing off in a big way.

At the time when Tyrantar was released in August, it was the most expensive Unite License ever. In an interview at the Pokemon World Championships, producer Masaaki Hishino told me that Tyranitar was a special circumstance and that we shouldn’t be worried about the price of Unite Licenses continuing to increase. ““Tyranitar just happens to be - out of various considerations - slightly higher priced than other licenses,” he