Pokémon Go’s cheap Remote Raid Passes are going away

polygon.com:

Pokémon Go players will have fewer opportunities to take part in the game’s Raids remotely (for “free,” anyway) starting next week. Developer Niantic announced Thursday that it plans to end the weekly distribution of cheap Remote Raid Passes that have been included in one-PokéCoin bundles over the past two years, when the company added the new gameplay feature to adapt Pokémon Go to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting on May 23, Pokémon Go’s in-game shop will no longer include Remote Raid Passes in weekly one-PokéCoin Event Boxes, Niantic said in a post on the game’s official website. Instead, that cheap weekly box will feature “a rotating array of items,” Niantic said.

In announcing the change, Niantic says it’s “excited to get back to playing together in person” and that it’s working on ways to “support players who have difficulty reaching Gyms” with “solutions such as tools for community leaders to organize local events and faster approval for new Gyms.”

The Pokémon Go maker also says it’s bringing new social features to its mobile game in the next few months. Those social features have been in testing in a separate, stand-alone app and accessible to select players of another Niantic game, Ingress, since early May. That social app lets players talk to each other and coordinate meet-ups directly through the app, which Pokémon Go players have typically done through outside services, like Discord, over the years.

While Niantic’s promise to make it easier for players to coordinate meet-ups and access to new Gyms will likely help make the removal of inexpensive Remote Raid Passes sting less, the loss of another pandemic-era convenience will surely cause some outcry. Players can still purchase Remote Raid Passes from